


Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range

by Neriad13



Series: Delta's Heart Saga [1]
Category: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games)
Genre: ADHD Character, Angst and Tragedy, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Backstory, Dark Comedy, Depression, Drug Addiction, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Found Family, Gen, Gun Violence, Historical References, Historically Accurate Memery, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Male Friendship, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Panic Attacks, Physical Abuse, Prison, Sad Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, Toxic friendship, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 107,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25609369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neriad13/pseuds/Neriad13
Summary: Exclusive Interview - the Man Who ‘Discovered Atlantis’Interviewed by Stanley PooleYou’ve seen the newsreel footage! Heard the rumors! Now hear thetruth, straight from the horse’s mouth andonlyright here in the Rapture Tribune!What is therealstory behind the adventurer we call...Johnny Topside?~Or~You know the end of the story. Buthowit happened is a different matter entirely.Nobody can look away from a good wreck.
Series: Delta's Heart Saga [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2000584
Comments: 22
Kudos: 26
Collections: Genuary 2021





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> \- When two boats are approaching each other from any angle and this angle remains the same over time (constant bearing) they are on a collision course. Because of the implication of collision, "constant bearing, decreasing range" has come to mean a problem or an obstacle which is incoming. Less formally, an impending disaster.
> 
> \- This work is partially inspired by [Slack-water’s fantastic art](https://slack-water.tumblr.com/post/164121891244/what-do-you-think-project-deltajohnny-topside). Check them out!
> 
> \- A lot of the research for the first third of the story comes from the ‘There’s Something in the Sea’ ARG, which is also very cool, if you’ve never looked into it.
> 
> \- Chapters will be individually tagged with content warnings (except in the case of character death - consider that one a blanket warning). If you need me to add a warning, please let me know.
> 
> \- Prologue CW: panic attack, institutional abuse, gun violence and suicidal ideation.

**Persephone Penal Colony, 1957**

**Infirmary**

Once, he had thought it beautiful.

The towering skyscrapers reaching ever toward the surface, the glow of neon in the deep, the play of its light on the sea life who had made their home on the doorstep of the impossible. 

Once, it would have been everything he had ever dreamt of.

But now he saw it only in his nightmares; a sickening, mazelike swirl of glass and steel and leering smiles, where he hovered, drowning, his final exhalation racing upward as bubbles, to where he would never go again.

Devon opened his eyes. For a moment, he was disoriented, dead certain that he was in his cell, but thrown off guard by surroundings which did not gel with that conclusion. 

The moment passed and sluggishly, it all came back. Once, he would have thought it ridiculous to be more disappointed that he was _outside_ a cell rather than _in_ one, but, well, he’d been proven wrong more times than he could count lately. 

His arm was furiously itchy beneath the bandages. Drowsily, he realized he’d been scratching at it in his sleep again - this time badly enough that he’d managed to shred the top layer of gauze - and jerked his good hand away. So that was what had woken him, then. He’d had an easier time sleeping when there was no feeling in it at all. Even with the nightmares, waking ones included.

He supposed it was a good sign, having nerve endings again. Really, anything was an improvement over losing the arm entirely. Back when sunlight was an endless commodity and the smell of the surf was something that still thrilled him, he’d witnessed fellow bluejackets suffer amputations for less. But here…

He inspected the IV line taped in place to the back of his good hand, with its faintly glowing liquid doing god-knows-what as it made its way into his body. 

Here, things were different.

Before he put his hand down, the thin metal plaque on his identification bracelet caught his eye. It had flipped itself over in his sleep, revealing the number that had taken the place of his name. He frowned at it, annoyed that fixing it was beyond his current capabilities. His right arm might have been healing, but that didn’t mean it could do more than twitch a finger every now and again. 

It was such a small thing, keeping one’s number hidden. It impacted nothing - not the lottery, not the way their records were filed or how staff treated them - but there was one miniscule, insignificant thing it _did_ do. 

It said _I am not a number. If you want to see me as such, you’ll have to work for it._ It gave prison staff a nanosecond of unnecessary labor every time they needed to check it. It gave the newer guards a moment of pause before speaking to someone whose number they didn’t know yet. 

They were supposed to refer to inmates by number, according to the dog eared rulebook the warden (who had every number memorized, it seemed, the second a person set foot in Persephone) pulled out from time to time, rather than name. Anything that made that the slightest bit more difficult felt like the one act of rebellion a person could safely get away with. It was something of an unspoken rule among the inmate population, keeping one’s number hidden. And one of the only ways of staying sane afforded to them, as useless in a practical sense as it was.

Glumly, he set his hand down on the coverlet, being careful not to disturb the IV and laid there for a while, gazing up at the ceiling tiles. The light from outside made bizarre patterns on them, its glow suffusing the room with a cool, strange luminescence. No one, not even the handful of actual doctors the prison employed, knew what caused it. For those who had been here long enough, it was just one more insolvable mystery among many that had faded into the background of their lives. 

Devon was still new enough to find it concerning. There were a lot of things down here, in the junk heap of Rapture, that he found concerning. All things considered, mysterious lights in the deep ranked rather lower on the list than one would have assumed.

A low groan escaped his throat, as he struggled to restrain himself from scratching the bandages into ribbons. 

It felt like there were ants crawling beneath the bandages. Fire ants. Which was one of the few things that made sense down here, in its twisted sort of way.

He closed his eyes and tried to forget about them, marching up and down beneath the unscratchable gauze. When that didn’t work, he tried to forget the memory of ever having had two arms at all. It couldn’t hurt if it never existed. 

But it did exist. And the thought exercise turned into a fantasy of cutting it off. 

There was no saying how long he tried to get back to sleep. There was no moonlight at the bottom of the sea. No way to tell if the sun had risen yet and no visible clocks in this room, lined with patient beds and little else. Not for the first time, he felt a pang of loss for the watch that had been taken from him when he’d been brought through the gates of Persephone. It had been the only possession he had from the surface. The only memory he had of the person who had given it to him.

He opened his eyes and glared at the ceiling. He thought about how exhausted he’d be, come morning and how much he’d rather not be exhausted when dealing with the staff he was going to be dealing with.

It was the mumbling that interrupted his thoughts. His whole body tensed. It was happening again. Three nights ago an inmate slightly newer than him had been admitted to the infirmary to recover from some surgery or other. On the first night he must’ve had enough sedatives in him to stop the mumbling from going any farther than that. But on the next one…

He had turned into a sleepwalking wreck racked with night terrors. For the past two nights, it had been like clockwork. He was affable enough in what passed for daylight hours down here, but Devon couldn’t help but see him just a little bit differently when he turned up screaming at the foot of his bed in the dead of night and had no memory of having done so in the morning. Or of having pissed on the floor, for that matter. 

The night nurse wasn’t fond of him.

Minutes that felt like an eternity passed. The mumbling, every so often containing what might have been a coherent word - _cactus? hummingbird?_ \- rose in volume, pitch and violent desperation before it became an ear-splitting shriek.

Devon clenched his jaw and stuffed a finger in his ear. It was the best he could do. The only thing for it was to wait it out. Just a little longer. If he could endure it for _one_ moment, he could endure it for the _next_ and for the one after _that_ and... 

From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the white scrubs of the night nurse dashing by (the guard whose patrols often intersected with his shift called him Sammy, to his disdain. Devon just couldn’t picture him as a Sammy). Ordinarily, he’d have a bucket of water ready to throw on the sleepwalker or a flashlight to shine in his eyes but this time-

There was the silver glint of a syringe in his hand.

Devon sat bolt upright, the burns on his right side protesting as he moved, just in time to catch sleepwalker and nurse clashing in the aisle. The sleepwalker was still screaming bloody murder as he caught the nurse’s wrists in his hands, the syringe, inches from piercing skin, still clenched in the nurse’s white knuckled grip. Was he still sleepwalking? Awake? Somewhere between the two? It was impossible to tell.

Devon’s pulse raced with adrenaline. His body screamed at him to _do something do something do something_. The fire ants kept prickling at his arm. 

Do _what?_ He was dragging an IV stand behind him. He was down a limb. There was a patch of his body from his ribs to his hip that barely had skin the last time he had seen it. Not to mention, helping the sleepwalker would cost both of them. But helping the nurse was _treason._ What could he possibly-

The room erupted into wild cheers as the nurse crashed to the ground, the syringe falling out of his hand and skittering across the floor.

“ _Fuckin’ kill him, Georgie!_ ” a patient he’d just been talking to about gardening that morning screeched at the top of his lungs, his face contorted almost beyond recognition in hatred.

The sleepwalker was straddling the fallen nurse now, his hands locked around his throat, squeezing the life out of him as he struggled beneath. His latex gloved hands with their blunted fingernails clawed uselessly at his assailant’s arms. 

There was something like elation surging through Devon’s veins as he watched. After every single indignity that nurse had _put them through,_ after _every single thing this place had done_...there was a part of him that rejoiced at the thought of watching him choke to death.

The part of him that hadn’t yet had its humanity burned out of it recoiled, as much at himself as at the situation. _Remember when you thought life had value?_ , it said.

He did his best to ignore it.

Even in the dim light, he could see that the nurse’s face was a deeper shade than was healthy for his skin tone. His already weak flailing was losing force. Devon watched, not a sound passing his lips, still as a statue but for the trembling of his good hand as it gripped the blanket. 

_Die. Die. Die. Let it happen. Let it end._

_Stop it._ the voice he’d tried to suppress shot back, _This isn’t you._

The nurse ceased fighting. His body went limp on the linoleum floor. 

The sleepwalker kept on squeezing.

And then the infirmary door crashed open, colliding with the wall as the person behind it bolted through.

A flash of black uniform fabric.

A shout.

A shot that filled the room with its sound and rendered all else silent.

The sleepwalker slumped to the floor.

Devon felt as though he were going to throw up.

The guard holstered his gun, nearly dropping it in the process and cried out “ _GODDAMMIT,_ Sammy!” as he dragged the night nurse out from under the body. 

Sammy was still. There was the barest sprinkling of blood on his collar. The guard thumped his chest with his fists, crying out his name all the while. After long moments of increasing desperation on the guard’s part, he sprang to life, gasping for air. He coughed and coughed and coughed for what seemed like forever, until he was gagging as he coughed and there was no difference between one sound and the other.

In the midst of the hubbub, Devon could hear someone sobbing on the other side of the aisle. A cursory glance told him that it was his gardening friend. William. That was his name. He looked away as fast as he’d looked over there.

“You okay, Sammy?” the guard pleaded in a moment between coughs, looking for a moment as though he were about to cry himself. 

“The fuck _do you think_?” Sammy wheezed, his voice nothing like the one he used to demand they take their medicine and obey without question, even if something was plainly amiss, right before launching into another coughing fit. 

The guard’s shoulders slumped, though the briefest flash of relief crossed his face first.

“Look, you want help or no?”

“Water.”

William was sobbing louder. Or maybe it just seemed louder because Sammy was coughing less.

“Hey!” the guard snapped, rising to his feet and turning on his heel toward William’s bed, “ _You_ \- can it or I’ll can it for you. You hear me? Yeah? Want another pass in solitary?”

The sobbing turned into wailing, all the rage William’s face had contained mere minutes ago replaced with overpowering pain. The guard raised a fist. Devon’s heart skipped a beat.

“ _Water._ ” Sammy wheezed, tugging weakly at the hem of his friend’s jacket.

He lowered his fist. His visage softened.

“...right.” he said, somewhat sheepishly.

After he came back with the water, he slapped William so hard that his head jerked on his neck. Devon flinched as though he’d been hit himself. His sobbing turned into sniffling. His hand trembling, he reached up to touch the mark on his cheek.

“Show’s over.” the guard said coolly, flexing his wrist as though he’d smacked a bug against a wall with too much zeal, “Anyone not sleeping in five minutes gets more o’ the same.”

No one said a word as they settled back down into their beds. The only sounds to be heard were the creaking of mattress springs and the occasional cough of the night nurse in between sips of water. 

Devon laid down and squeezed his eyes shut. He had the beginnings of a headache behind his temples from clenching his jaw with such force and a dull ache in his side from moving too fast. 

And then, with dawning horror, he realized he was trembling, shaking so badly that the mattress squeaked beneath him. He couldn’t seem to stop, no matter how hard he tried. There was a sob rising in his throat and tears leaking out from the corners of his eyes. He bit his lip in an effort to hold it back. It was like sticking a finger in a dam that was about to explode. 

The thought of drawing attention to himself only scared him more.

 _Stay quiet and they leave you alone,_ he repeated to himself, _Show nothing and they have nothing to hold over you. Stay quiet and-_

 _But he’s dead,_ the other voice wailed inside him, _He’s dead, dead, dead and you’re next._

Snatches of conversation drifted in through the open door, in between his ragged breaths and pounding heart.

“ _...fuck am I supposed to do with a body this late?_ ”

“ _...in the mop closet, I don’t care…_ ”

“ _...cleaning detail finds it first, it’s your prob…_ ”

The softest of sobs escaped from his throat. 

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. It was like the physical manifestation of dread was pinning him to the mattress. 

In the midst of it all, his _goddamn arm_ still prickled with pain, the ants sinking their mandibles into it en masse. 

And beneath the freshly sprouted nerves and muscles and sinew, he realized that he felt _it,_ smoldering still inside his bones. With a thought, he could turn embers into flame. 

One command, and he could end all of this.

 _I want to die,_ the wailing voice whispered in his ear.

 _No, you don’t,_ the part of him whose anger was stronger than its despair argued back, _Shut up. Just let us sleep._

The thudding of his heart grew louder and louder until there was nothing but it in the world.

_I want to die._

_No._

He was drowning, his breath slipping away in silver bubbles, racing up, up, up into the maze of gleaming light, of high society, of gardens that bloomed in impossible places. 

It was nothing but a shell. A newly painted house built of rotten wood. A statue that showed its misshapenness only if the beholder dared look at its wall facing side.

To think that anyone had ever thought _that_ beautiful.

What was beauty but the mask behind which ugliness thrived?


	2. Iceland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the beginning, there were two best friends and a found family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Surprise! You’re reading a World War II fic now. For one chapter, at least.
> 
> \- CW: none.

**San Diego, 1939**

During the funeral, all he could think about was seeing the ocean.

Devon tapped his toe as the priest droned on and tried to look properly sad. It wasn’t that he _wasn’t_ sad - not exactly. It was just that his sadness had already been used up. All he felt now was numbness. A tired void inside him that had no more energy left to care. 

The woman who had raised him had died long before she had drawn her last breath. He had watched her fade away these past months, the cancer eating away at her until no one he recognized remained. He had said his goodbyes while she lived. All he wanted to do now was move on.

When he found his way out of his thoughts, he looked up to see that the priest had stopped. The half dozen people who had been her friends were scooping up their handfuls of dirt. He joined in the queue, pretending that he’d been listening all along. 

The dirt was dry and crumbly. It trickled through his fingers as he tried to carry it the few steps to the gravesite. Half of it blew away in the wind when he at last, let it go. 

It was over. The gravediggers hovered nearby with their shovels, waiting for the mourners to be on their way. He said his goodbyes to the middle-aged women who’d been members of her reading club, patiently accepting their condolences, their offers of food, their comments on what a good nephew he had been through the entire thing. He nodded along politely, not really listening. 

And then, as soon as he was able, he was gone.

-

The beach was filled with holidaymakers. In all directions, people lounged under umbrellas or cooked lazily in the sun.

He caught a whiff of fried chicken that made his stomach gurgle when he passed a family having a picnic and thought about how glad he was that he wouldn’t have to cook that night. He’d gotten slightly better at it as time went on (there really hadn’t been any other options when she became too weak to stand up for more than half an hour), but still, nothing he made quite tasted right. It might have been due to his own lack of skill, but he had a lingering suspicion that at least some of it had to do with being able to share a meal with someone who wasn’t constantly sick to her stomach.

He felt increasingly odd as he hiked down to the ocean’s edge, his good shoes sinking in the sand, his suit a line of darkness weaving through a maze of color. Like a specter among the living. A specter who was getting sand in his only dress shoes and really should have thought this through. 

Halfway down, he stopped to free himself from the jacket that he’d been sweltering in for the entire funeral but was now positively cooking him. The tie had come off long before, the very moment after he’d hopped the trolley.

At the far end of the beach, where the holidaymakers grew scarce, was the craggy rock he often used as both seat and storage. With a smile meant for no one but him, he lowered himself down on it and peeled off his sweltering shoes and socks with immense relief. The pants that he’d spent an age ironing a sharp crease into that morning were rolled up to the knee without a care for wrinkles. After he’d popped a few buttons on his collar and rolled up his sleeves, he felt like himself again.

And then, after stashing the clothes in the rock’s hollow, he stepped into the surf. The sand was silk smooth under his feet and the water was deliciously cool. As he walked, a sizable strand of seaweed washed up and wound around his ankle, as though meaning to pull him in. He paused a moment to kick himself free it of it like a cat who had just stepped in a puddle.

The sounds of the holidaymakers faded behind him as he strolled along the coast, happily wriggling his toes in the brine, his nostrils awash with the fresh scent of the sea.

The memory of her face in those final days was smoothed away by the sound of the waves and the call of the gulls. He hoped that she had found a peace as fine as this one, wherever she was.

The sand was increasingly broken up by jagged, pitted rocks as he went. When the beach had turned into nothing but rocks, he stepped out of the surf, spread his arms for balance and began hopping from stone to stone.

At the very end of this strip of coast, there was a series of tide pools that few ever ventured far enough to see. It was his secret place, the one he went to when he needed to get away from everything else.

Starfish with arms so delicate they looked like lace. Greenish anemones twitching their fronds just enough to reveal that they were alive, a dip that looked like an alien eye peering up from their centers. And mussels, anchored to stone and at the mercy of the tides, but seemingly no worse for wear because of it.

After he’d had his fill of the smaller pools, he sat down cross-legged at the edge of the largest one and peered as deeply into it as his sight could reach. It was like a window to another world, populated only by tiny, jewel-like residents. A world more perfect and beautiful than the one that loomed above it.

When he grew tired of craning his neck, he stretched out on the flat shelf of rock beside it and dozed for a bit. The smooth stone was comfortingly warm against his back.

When he opened his eyes, he felt a little more ready to think about the future.

He was emancipated now. The social worker had come by yesterday morning to make it official. It had been the most logical choice, of course - it was only a few months before he turned eighteen. No sense in stepping into foster care just to step right back out. 

But there was something frightening and vast about the freedom that entailed. His life was in no one’s but his own hands now. Failure, success - whatever the consequences of his actions, they were on him. He could do whatever it was he wanted. He could be whoever he wanted to be.

The problem was, he had no idea what that was.

After spending so long seeing to someone else’s every need - those needs becoming so persistent and so vital that they took the place of his own - it was as though “want” had been removed from his vocabulary. He didn’t know how to do it anymore. It scared him, thinking of all the possible pathways that stretched endlessly into the horizon, one no better than the next but demanding he make the choice all the same. 

He decided to doze a little while longer.

Visions of an empty house filled with dustcloth draped ghosts and relics of a family he’d never known stole into his daydreams. He felt lonely just thinking about going back there, food or no. 

So, selling the house, then. That was a first step, at least. Progress. 

And then a million more unknown steps after that.

The sun was starting to burn on his skin. Drowsily, he sat up and scooched backwards into the shade of the stony ledge above him. 

For a while, he just sat there, turning a pebble over and over in his hand, watching the ships go by. There was a massive one just coming into harbor; a low, flat shape on the horizon. He was sure he’d seen it before.

As it came closer, he had to squint to pick out the name, hidden as it was beneath the overhanging landing strip that made up its deck.

 _USS Saratoga_ , it said, in clean white letters.

It was an aircraft carrier, its neat rows of silvery planes lined up like toys and figures that looked as tiny as lead soldiers moving about between them.

He found himself wondering how they lived out there, out at sea for weeks at a time, on a ship the size of a city block. What it was like, to make a home out of a thing that sailed atop a different world.

It definitely wouldn’t be like an empty house.

-

The fan in the recruiter’s office needed oiling. Every rotation of the blades made a _scree_ sound that probably wouldn’t have gotten on his nerves half so much if he wasn’t already so nervous.

Devon twiddled his thumbs under the desk where the recruiter couldn’t see. He was going through his paperwork with agonizing slowness. Reading every single word. Flipping a page only to flip back to the page he’d just turned, with a tiny frown on his face. Letting loose an occasional “Hmm” that inspired no confidence whatsoever.

He’d just barely squeaked past the height requirement. He knew he was underweight. Sure, they were in the midst of a big recruitment push, what with the battle lines growing increasingly treacherous on the other side of the world and accepting just about anyone but, even so, there was a worm of anxiety wriggling around in his stomach.

There wasn’t any Plan B. 

The air inside the office felt oppressive. There was a sheen of moisture coating the recruiter’s flushed skin and more of the same on the off-white walls. The door had been propped open with a brick when he’d walked in, but there was no breeze to speak of outside. 

And the fan went _scree scree scree,_ the ribbon tied to it fluttering, but making no discernable impact on the coolness of the air. 

He had reached the letter of recommendation written by his shop teacher. Devon recognized it by the small coffee stain in the upper right corner. An accident that morning, when he’d been getting his things together in a rush. He was glad he’d been fast enough on the draw to pull it out before it spread. 

There were a few letters in there that he’d managed to nab before graduation, from the teachers of his better classes - Arithmetic, Geometry, Physics. Music was better left off. 

He was spending an awfully long time on that letter.

Finally, he looked up.

“Mr...ah…” 

He glanced back down at the letter. 

“Mr. Keighley. Were you aware that the Navy offers trade schools? Metalworking, woodworking, electronics, blacksmithing, design...practically anything you can think of. We’re expanding the fleet and need good men to build ‘er up, well as keep ‘er afloat. What do you think...about learning a trade?”

**Charleston, 1941**

**USS Heywood**

“ _Jesus_ , who’s letting _kids_ aboard these days? Somebody call a social worker.”

Devon looked up from his rack with a jolt at the big, sunburnt man who’d just strolled into the cabin like he owned the place, a sea bag thrown over his shoulder. For just a second, a tremor of fear shot through his heart. 

It was happening again. With the bunkmate he’d be spending days, possibly weeks, sleeping inches away from. But he’d handled bullies before. The trick with them was laying down the law right off the bat. 

He narrowed his eyes.

“Why, hello to you too.”

“No, really” the man went on, stooping down to his level and measuring the air in front of the top of his head with his hand, “Did you stop growing in grade school? I got kid brothers taller than you.”

“Why _yes_ ” Devon said with exaggerated politeness, even as he crossed his arms, “It _is_ nice to meet you as well. Charmed.”

The man stood back up and made a pensive face. For a second, he really did think he was going to say something intelligent.

“ _And_ a carrot top! Damn. Damn, that’s unfortunate.”

Devon took a step forward, his trademarked withering glare in full effect.

“Any less fortunate than _your_ birth? From the sounds of it...nah. Probably not.”

“Uh…”

He took a step backward, a flash of concern flitting across his face.

Technically, Devon never started fights. On most occasions, he had no chance of winning them. But _acting_ as though he did - that was a different story. There was something deeply frightening to people about a little man rounding on a big one, without a trace of humility to be found. It made them wonder what he had up his sleeve. 

“Look” Devon went on, closing in on him, “If we’re going to be bunking together, I’d rather our relations be cordial. Wouldn’t you? Be _real nice_ for both parties if I didn’t have to go rigging a toilet to go flushing the wrong way at high pressure under your specific ass. Now, then. Shall we try this again?”

He held out his hand.

“Devon Keighley, Hull Technician. Pleased to make your acquaintance. And you are…?”

For a second, the man looked like he’d been slapped. And then his face twisted into a tight-lipped smile. He snorted once, the compressed air of his laughter escaping through his nose.

“Ken Lisowski.” he said, with genuine pleasure as he grabbed his hand and shook it firmly, “Gunner’s Mate. Sorry. My mouth...uh...it goes on flapping without me sometimes. The doc says I’ve got some kind of hyper-whatsit...impulse...disorder and I’ve gotta work harder at...not doing that. Sorry again! You’re alright, kid. This your first tour?”

“Ye-es.” he answered slowly, wondering if the handshake should have ended by now. “I got out of trade school not too long ago and I’ve done some yard work, but never”-

“My second.” he cut in, releasing his hand at last. “I’m crossing my fingers for someplace warm. I’m hearing it’s _Martinique!_ I don’t know about you, but I could do with a few months sittin’ on an island. After the work’s done with, of course.”

Devon shook his head.

“I dunno. I’ve heard...other rumors. What if it’s a different sort of island?”

“C’mon,” he said, shrugging defensively, “Every island has girls.”

-

Devon poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee from the percolator and stumbled blearily up the narrow stairs. He just couldn’t seem to get the stink of the previous evening off of him. All night, he’d tossed and turned, smelling it no matter what he changed into, no matter how hard he tried to scrub it off in the shower. It had literally gone up his _nose_. He had no idea how a person went about scrubbing their nasal passages.

At least Ken hadn’t made any asinine comments about it. Yet. 

_Devon can fit down the pipe,_ they’d said, _How about he clears the blockage? We’ll hold onto your ankles, promise._

To be fair, they had held on. They just neglected to turn off the sewage first.

The morning was still gray when he poked his head above deck. It was definitely getting colder too. He shivered, wondering if it was past time to have broken out his winter gear. But that was ridiculous - the calendar still said spring regardless of what the weather forecast said. He’d be damned if he gave in just yet.

Ken was waiting in his usual spot, slumped despondently over the railing, a steaming cup of coffee between his hands. He still hadn’t come to grips with the fact that they’d been going north rather than south. And the fact that they were _still_ headed north, far past the hope of landing somewhere pleasant. There’d been an iceberg on the horizon yesterday. 

_That’s the exact opposite of an island!_ Ken had said. 

Devon had asked him _what the hell that even means_ and after a moment of trying to think it through, he gave up trying to explain himself and slunk away, grumbling.

Devon slumped against the railing next to him, his back to the ocean, cold wind in his hair and brought the coffee to his lips. It always tasted burnt, but the warmth of it felt good going down his throat.

Ken stood up a little straighter and turned towards him when he felt the slight impact of his body against the railing. He smiled and was about to say something, when a look of concern came over him instead.

“Holding up alright?” he called out over the wind.

Devon blinked. He’d noticed. He’d _cared._

“Well enough.” he answered with a tired smile, “How about you?”

“Ehhh, I’ll make it.” Ken said, frowning at his coffee. “But y’know what?”

“What?”

“That makes it almost worth it.”

He turned around in time to catch the sun rising, orange and huge, as though it were just beyond the rim of the horizon. Its light was broken on the waves into glimmering shards and thrown into the sky to catch on the bottoms of wispy clouds.

They stood there watching it rise, in the quiet time before morning role call would tear them away.

Devon had forgotten entirely about his coffee in the interim and when he went for another sip, he was surprised to see Ken tipping a bit of liquid from a small steel flask into it.

“Just a little.” he said, with a wink. “Seeing as you’re a kid and all.”

**Reykjavik, 1941**

Devon stumbled into sunlight and fresh air, glad to be free of the dark, smoky confines of the movie house. The theater had been packed end to end, standing room only. But the movie had been some Swedish film that no one could understand. Its chief entertainment value had come from the other Americans who had loudly made fun of it for the entire runtime. He dearly hoped there hadn’t been any Icelanders in there who had expected a quiet matinee.

Ken strolled out after him, looking more relaxed than he’d seen him in days, pausing only to grind his cigarette butt under his heel.

“Alright, kiddo.” he said, brushing the popcorn residue off his hands. “Half a day left. Where to?”

Devon thought about it. It was something of a miracle that their schedules had managed to coincide today. This time was precious and with all the work to be done to ready the place for the troops following them, it might be a while before it came again.

He cast an eye about what passed for the main drag of Reykjavik. Quaint little shops, unimposing buildings. Nothing higher than two stories. He was sure it only qualified as a city because there was nothing bigger than it in the entire country. 

There were two movie houses total in the whole place, a handful of bars and beyond that, precious little of interest to the several thousand bored Americans who had suddenly found themselves here, building Nissen huts to live in, day after day.

He nibbled his lip, trying to come up with a good answer. And then it hit him.

“There’s got to be beaches around here, right?”

Ken made a face.

“Aw kid, ain’t you seen enough of the ocean yet? Why, we could, ah…”

He looked around, his face scrunched up as he physically strained to dredge up a better idea. It looked painful.

“Oh, fine.” he agreed huffily, when the pressure in his skull became too much, “We’ll find us a beach.”

-

The sky was gray, the wind was brisk and the beach was more pebbles than sand, but even so Devon stripped off his shoes and socks and took off running, Ken trailing after him. He almost crashed into him when he came to a screeching halt.

“Goddammit, kid!” Ken exclaimed, as he awkwardly regained his balance, “What the _hell_ ”-

“Look!”

Devon crouched down and pointed at a wriggling shell that he’d come inches from stomping on. Before their eyes, it rose to its spindly legs and skittered into the surf.

“ _Great!_ ” Ken said, rolling his eyes, “We saw a crab. Oh what a story this is going to make for the boys stuck on work detail. How jealous they’ll be! ‘Wow, if only I could see a crab!’ they’ll say, ‘That’d make my life complete!’”

Devon stood up.

“But don’t you ever stop and think about how _weird_ of a creature it is?”

“Look, it can’t be _that_ weird if I’ve eaten so many of them. With butter...and a can of beer...”

“It doesn’t have bones. Its exoskeleton is what holds it together. Those tiny articulated joints that let it move...the fact that it’ll die if it goes too long without a properly-fitting shell that it has to find on its own...isn’t that the least bit interesting to you?” 

Ken was giving him a strange look.

“I...spent a lot of time at the tide pools when I was a kid.” he said quickly, “And...in books. About the tide pools. The navy’s the closest I could get to the ocean.”

“Huh.” Ken said, bending down to look at the trail the hermit crab had left in the sand, “Never thought about it that way.”

The moment was shattered when a mischievous grin stole across his face.

“Kid.”

“What?”

He punched him lightly on the arm.

“What’ll they say back at camp...when I tell them there’s a _nerd_ amongst us?”

“You _won’t_.”

“Try and stop me!”

He took off with a maniacal squeal down the shore, kicking up pebbles in his wake.

“Ow-ow. _Ow!_ ” Devon yelled as he dashed after him, half screaming and half laughing as he stomped on the sharper stones of the beach with his bare feet.

With a final burst of effort he launched himself forward, caught him by the knees and sent both of them tumbling to the ground, shrieking with laughter.

-

They’d all been given stationary sets. Nothing fancy, of course. Merely serviceable.  
Even so, it felt a shame to let it gather dust under his bunk. Devon had made up his mind that he was going to write a letter today. He was going to have _something_ to put in the mailbag for once.

But now that he was here - sitting cross-legged on the chilly beach, a pencil in his hand and stationary on his lap - his mind was totally blank. 

Who to write to?

His old shop teacher? He wasn’t entirely sure if the man was still kicking. He’d looked worse for wear with every year he’d known him. The year he’d graduated had been his final one teaching at the school. 

Classmates he hadn’t spoken to in years? They’d had to have gotten married or moved away or long forgotten him by now.

He’d made friends in trade school, of course, but most of them had come to Iceland with him.

He stuck the pencil back in the stationary box and set it aside.

The sound of the surf rumbled comfortingly in his ears. Gulls called in the distance. He stretched out his legs and ground his heels into the sun-soaked pebbles. Summer took a little longer to reach these shores, but once it did, it wasn’t half bad.

A little ways down the beach, there was an old man with some kind of machine. Very faintly, he could hear its engine sputtering. For a while, he watched the old man, mainly because there was nothing else to watch but also, because, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what he was doing. After trying and failing to make any kind of educated guess for long enough, he crept to his feet and walked towards him.

Getting closer still didn’t yield answers. Hooked up to a small generator was a great spool of wire and a crank handle for reeling it in. One end of it trailed off into the water. Another wire led into the man’s hands and terminated in a rough metal box upon which he was slowly pressing buttons, his brow furrowed in concentration.

Devon walked up behind him, thinking that he’d made enough noise tramping over the pebbly sand to alert the man to his presence.

“Hello.” he said, “What _is_ that?” 

“Oh!”

The man spun around in surprise, the box nearly slipping out of his hands. His graying eyebrows were as wild as his windblown beard and a thin pair of spectacles had slipped halfway down his craggy nose. 

“I’m sorry.” Devon said, stepping back and putting his hands up, “I didn’t mean to”-

“No, no!” the man sputtered, shifting the box to one hand and waving the other in a conciliatory gesture, “Is fine. My hearing...is not what it was. And my thoughts are loud anyway. You are...American?”

His eyes narrowed as they scanned his civilian clothes.

The locals were not exactly pleased about the American invasion (“occupation,” if you were an officer with an agenda geared towards making it sound better than it was), or the British one that had come before _that_. Despite the propaganda the higher-ups had been feeding them about “Defending Freedom!” and “Sheltering Them Under the Eagle’s Wing,” he found that he couldn’t blame them in the slightest. 

Flooding the shores of a neutral country with troops sent to “protect” it in the event of a German invasion that may or may not be coming against the wishes of that country’s own government...was not exactly a thing that inspired friendship among the locals. 

He was far from incognito out of uniform, but it was better than advertising it wherever he went on his days off. 

“Ah...yes.” Devon answered, smiling nervously, wondering if it would have been better if he’d stayed away.

The old man pushed his spectacles up his nose and squinted at him, his lips pursed, as though weighing very carefully what he was going to say next.

“You...have been away from home long?” he asked, at last.

“Years.” Devon answered flatly.

The old man seemed strangely saddened by the answer. 

“Ohhh!” he said, his face offering a sympathy he hadn’t asked for, “You miss it?”

When had this turned into an interrogation?

“Not...really, if I’m honest.” he answered, wishing the man would move onto any other topic, “Home is where I toss my duffle. That’s all I need.”

“Hmm.”

There was a silence that must have been mere seconds but felt like far longer. Had he failed some kind of test? 

It had been a bad idea from the get-go. He just _had_ to get a closer look at a strange machine, nevermind the even stranger person wielding it.

The second he opened his mouth to apologize again, the old man’s scruffy face burst into a smile. He held up the box with more than a little bit of pride.

“Is camera!”

“A…a _what?_ ” Devon sputtered, his eyes darting back down to the box with its poorly welded edges.

Last he’d checked, cameras needed lenses. And a shutter. And-

“Deep sea camera.” he answered, interrupting his thoughts, “Is down there.”

He pointed out across the bay.

“If it not get tangled in seaweed again. Here.”

He set the box down on the sand and took hold of the crank handle. It turned easily at first. Then his pace slackened. His face grew red with effort and he made a series of strained sounding grunts.

Devon stepped a little closer, unsure of what to do.

“Can I...help?”

“Gah!”

The man leaned on the handle, panting.

“Damn thing. Two _would_ be better than one, eh? Maybe we dredge it up before moonrise. Come. Other side. Go.”

He waved his hand at where he wanted Devon to go. Gingerly, he took hold of the crank, his hand brushing a hand as calloused as his own as he did so. 

“In a one…” the old man said, firmly planting his feet on the ground, “Two...THREEEEEE.”

Whatever it was, it was putting up a fight. Devon could feel sweat pooling between his shoulders as they struggled to turn the crank, every rotation an achievement worthy of writing home about, were there anyone to write to.

And then, all of a sudden, it was easier.

“Hah!” the old man yelled, his watery eyes alight with the fire of victory.

He spat in the sand and let go of the crank. Devon turned around to see something the size of an oversize bowling ball resting in the surf. The thing was completely entangled in seaweed, roots and all. 

After he’d freed it from the biggest pieces, the old man picked it up and dropped it on the beach, just out of reach of the tide. Devon crept closer to watch as he peeled away the remainder of the seaweed. 

On closer inspection, he saw that there were a pair of miniature propellers attached to the back, a light beaming out of a thick-glassed bulb on the front and what very well might have been a camera shutter after all. 

“Now we see if it brought back anything good, yeah?” the old man said, his eyes gleaming behind his spectacles.

Without delay, he twisted the entire top off and peered into the machinery inside. 

“Hmm. _Some_ water damage. But perhaps...”

He pulled out a tiny canister, popped it open and held its contents up to the light. Slowly, a smile spread across his face.

“Come see.” he said, gesturing with his hand at the strip of film, “Look. Is perfect.”

A little warily, Devon stepped closer, took the film and held it up to the light. 

He could see strange shells on the ocean floor, glittering fish, swaying beds of seaweed, no less lovely for being negatives. His eyes widened. He could almost picture himself down there, trawling the ocean floor. 

“Beautiful, yes?” the old man asked, practically beaming with pride.

“It is.”

“Is my secret project. Hobby. Maybe I get funding when I show them this, eh?”

“I...don’t see why it _wouldn’t_ get funded.”

“Hmm.”

He gestured for Devon to give the film back, rolled it back up and fit it neatly into the cannister. 

“You can never say when you deal with small minds. Military use. Spy use. Exploration? Art? Bah, who cares about that?”

He shrugged.

“But money is money. What else am I to do, if I love my work? Oh!”

He slapped himself on the forehead. 

“How rude of me. Einar Herjólfsson.”

He extended his hand. Devon shook it.

“Devon Keighley.”

“Ah! Pleased to meet you. You…”

He tilted his head and gave him a hard look.

“What is it you do? Not...killing, is it?”

“Er…” Devon said, nervously scratching the back of his head, “I’m a hull technician. Repairs, mostly. Welding. I mean...if it comes down to it I _do_ fight, but mainly I keep the ship...er...shipshape.”

“Hmm.”

He thought for a moment, tugging on his beard.

“You are...staying close to here?”

“Uh...a couple miles away, yeah. On...Gunarrsson’s land, I think.”

“Ah! Yes, I know him. Of him. So...Hull Technician...you want to meet me here again on your next free day?”

-

“You serious, kid? Working on furlough? _Again?_ ”

Devon chucked another shovelful of dirt over the lip of the trench.

“C’mon. It beats bothering the livestock and besides”-

“That was _once!_ ”

“I get lunch out of it. And my hobbies don’t get a camp-wide reprimand.”

Ken huffed as he drove his shovel into the ground again.

“But you’ve gotta admit it was pretty funny.”

Devon smiled.

“Yeah. Man, I wish I’d been there to see that. They really did it? Out-mouthed Ralph the Mouth?” 

“Ha!” Ken laughed, leaning on his shovel, “His face got _beet red_. _Borscht_ red. Him and that one farmer with the bigger mouth on him, they’re just _going_ at it like I’ve never seen, back and forth until the cows _literally_ come home. Best day of my life...er...recently, anyway. God, I’m so tired of this.”

He stood up, hefted one more scoop of dirt over the rim and stuck the shovel upright in the earth. 

“One u-boat!” he exclaimed, waving his pointer finger around, “Just a _little_ excitement! Is that too much to ask? What are we even _doing_ here?”

He grunted as he hefted himself out of the trench and sat on the lip. Devon clambered up after him. They sat there for a bit, looking out across the fjord. The midday sun glittered on the crests of the waves far in the distance. It was so serene. With every day that passed by, he had more difficulty imagining an invasion or anything, really, emerging from those waters.

He twisted the top off his canteen and took a swig. Ken did likewise, dripping a stream of water down the front of his dirt-smeared undershirt. He wiped his mouth with the inside of its collar and turned to Devon. 

“That’s… _all_ you’re doing over there? Working? He’s not...y’know...making _advances_ on you...right?”

Devon choked on his water, coughing and sputtering for a good half minute before he was able to speak.

“What the... _no!_ Why the _hell_ would you assume that? Oh my _God_ …”

Another bunkmate working further down the trench looked up in response to the raised voice. Devon hurriedly stuck a smile on his face and waved at him. He waved back and resumed shovelling. 

Ken threw up his hands.

“Hey, look…” he said, a pained expression on his face, “I notice...when we go out, you’re the only one who never ends up getting a date. Who...doesn’t even _try_. So I thought that maybe…hrmm...”

He wiped the sweat off his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt in its place. 

“Y’know what? It’s not my business. Sorry I asked! I just...wanted to be sure you weren’t being...y’know...taken advantage of.”

Devon took another sip, swished it around in his mouth and spat it out into the trench.

“No.” he said, at last, “It isn’t like that. It isn’t like that...with anyone. It’s just that...I’ve never been _interested_ in dates. Or marriage. Or...other things. It’s like...there’s this hidden layer of society that I’m not a part of. That I don’t _get_...except maybe in an academic sense. Does that...make any kind of sense?”

“Huh.” Ken said, cocking his head as he thought about it, “Not...really? I can’t say it’s something I’ve ever wrapped my mind around before. But...it’s not for me to say, is it? The main thing is...are you _happy_...with...all that?”

Devon smiled, but there was a touch of sadness behind it.

“Yes.”

“Good!” Ken said, slapping him on the back, “Long as one of us is. Brunhilda’s been snubbing me lately and Beckett says he saw her out and about with Jones and if _that’s_ true, we gotta have _words_ , let me tell _you_. Sounds simpler, being you.”

“Heh. In some ways. In others, not so much. 

Devon kicked his heels at the dirt wall.

“Seriously, he’s an engineer. Studied at Oxford, might’ve made a buck if he stayed there, but came back home because he missed the place too much. He builds things in his garage - submersible cameras, that’s his pet project. Fixes boats as a day job. Every so often he takes a crack at some neighbor’s broken-down car. I help him out with the heavy stuff. He’s got some kind of injury that makes it hard, going it alone...and taking care of himself, sometimes. There’s a housekeeper that comes by every once in a while, but still…I like keeping him company. He’s got so many interesting stories. And he’s not a bad cook.”

“Well...” Ken said, smiling at him, “Long as you’re doing something better than bothering sheep.”

-

“Deeee-von!” Einar called out.

Devon crawled out from under the truck. He hadn’t known a thing about cars before setting foot in Einar’s garage. Or about engines, or wiring or navigation systems. Every day he came back, it was something new. He was getting a better education than the one he’d had in school. 

Einar was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, an oven mitt in hand.

“Kjötsúpa’s ready!” he said, with a smile that made the edges of his eyes crinkle, “Come, come.”

Devon peeled off his gloves, set the greasy apron aside and made some room on the beaten down drawing table they normally ate at. 

“Nei, nei!” Einar said, waving his hands animatedly, “Upstairs today. Is like icebox in here.”

The garage was the exact temperature of the sheet metal hut he’d been living in. But who was he to argue with a warm meal in a warm house? It felt like Summer had gone by in the blink of an eye. 

Einar turned around and vanished back inside.

He’d never been invited inside before. There was a tingle of trepidation running down his spine as he climbed the stairs. It was like he’d proven himself worthy of admittance into a secret world. What it meant was something he wasn’t sure of.

The warmth of the stove, the soup bubbling merrily on top, was the first thing that greeted him. His mouth watered at the scent.

“Oh! Excuse me.” Einar murmured, sweeping an armload of rumpled newspapers off the dining room table, “There.”

The chair he pulled out was piled with books. With a grunt, he picked up the entire stack and deposited it on the floor. 

“A-ha.” he said, with a nervous smile, “Not enough guests these days, eh? Please, sit down. I will bring soup.”

Devon made himself comfortable and looked around while Einar busied himself with bowls and cutlery. 

The peeling yellow walls were lined with photographs. There were misty mountains, rolling fields, icy waves, sheer walls of ice.

“Vatnajökull.” Einar said, turning around with a bowl of soup in hand and gesturing with his head to the last, “The biggest glacier. And this is Hvalfjörður. ‘Whale Fjord.’ Good place for picnics. Took them myself.”

He set the bowl down in front of him and a spoon next to it. 

“Thank you.” Devon said, still looking at the pictures, “They’re really beautiful.”

“Oh, no” Einar said, beaming with pride under the thinnest veneer of false humility, “They are nothing. An amateur’s hobby.”

He turned around to serve himself and took a seat in his own, bookless chair.

“Gjörið þið svo vel.” he said with a smile, picking up his spoon.

Near as Devon could tell, it meant something like ‘time to eat.’ The closest equivalent he could think of was saying grace, but that wasn’t the same at all.  
The mutton was incredibly tender and the potatoes had soaked up all the flavor of the broth. Too soon, his bowl was empty. Einar grinned as he watched him finish, took the bowl back and turned back to the stove to ladle out a second helping. 

Devon’s eyes roved over the photographs again as he ate, this time a little slower. He wondered what it’d be like, climbing a sheer wall of ice for the perfect picture, trekking through an environment where people were never meant to go. 

There was one picture on the wall that wasn’t a landscape. It took him by surprise, finding a pair of human eyes staring out at him. 

It was of a young man, his hair lifted by the wind, his mouth open in laughter at some unheard joke. 

“My son.” Einar said, noticing him looking at it.

He set his spoon down in the empty bowl and pushed it aside.

“Gone almost a year now.”

“To...school?” Devon ventured, cautiously hoping, even though he knew what the answer was going to be.

Einar shook his head. He seemed older all of a sudden, his body heavier as he leaned back in his chair. 

“It was a mine, out in Faxaflói Bay. We were out testing a new craft, got too close and well…”

He pointed to his right ear.

“I go deaf in one ear. Pétur...not so lucky.”

“I...I’m sorry.”

“Nei.” Einar answered, making a dismissive gesture with his hand, “Is...not as hard as it was in the beginning, especially with you around.”

He smiled as he patted the back of Devon’s hand.

“Thank you, for keeping an old man company.”

Devon shifted in his seat and slid his wallet from his back pocket. 

“Here.” he said, pulling out a much-abused photograph from inside and passing it over, “My parents. They...died before I was old enough to remember them. Spanish flu.”

“Oh!” Einar exclaimed, pushing his spectacles up his nose to see it.

It was such a formal, stiff picture, that said nothing about the type of people they might have been. Over the years, he’d tried and tried to find some clue in it that would tell him something important about them. But there was nothing there to find, save for the knowledge that he had his mother’s eyes and father’s nose.

“My aunt raised me and then...she got sick too. I’m the only one left.”

Einar passed the photograph back. Devon saw that his eyes were moist. 

“You come back here whenever you want, understand?” he said, thumping his hand on the table, “My door is never closed. I make all the kjötsúpa you can eat.”

Devon blinked back a tear that had been stuck in his eye ever since his aunt’s funeral.

“Thank you.” he croaked, after composing himself behind a cough, “Really.”

-

“That’s vandalism.” Devon said flatly, not looking up from the phrasebook Einar had given him. It was thicker than the pamphlet they’d handed out to everyone. More interesting too.

“It’s chalk.” Ken reiterated, “Wash right off in the next rain. Or with one good bucket of snowmelt.”

“Still not gonna endear you to anyone.”

“Well, Farmer Whatshisson can suck an egg. Can’t stop Kilroy. He’s _everywhere._ ”

He put the finishing touches on his masterpiece and stepped back to admire it. 

Devon looked up from the rock he’d been sitting on. Across the side of the barn were scrawled the words “KILROY WAS HERE,” along with a bad drawing of a big-nosed gentleman. Ken seemed pleased with himself. 

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Það er skítur.”

“Geshundheit.”

“It’s...nice...as...barn vandalism can be.”

“Eh.” Ken said noncommittally, dropping the chalk to the ground and kicking it into the dry grass. “What else ya gonna do? Tag a glacier? There’s not exactly an Effiel Tower around here.”

He blew into his hands and paced restlessly. Devon pulled his hat over his ears and turned back to his book. 

“Can you believe this?” Ken said a few minutes later, pointing in the direction of the setting sun. “It’s o-dark-hundred til _10 AM_ and now it’s setting again. That ain’t _natural._ ”

“That’s latitude for ya.”

“Hmph.”

He plopped himself down on the ground next to Devon and sulked for a bit. When it got too dim to read, he tucked the book away and took one last look at the graffiti. 

“I just miss the sun, you know?” Ken said softly, “Didn’t think I _could_ miss the sun. And that darkness out in the sticks...it _pens_ you in. Makes you feel, I dunno… _small._ Shit, imagine being a viking out here with nothing but a brushfire between you and...whatever’s out _there._ ”

Devon turned to look at him. In the entire time he’d known him, he had never once seen him gaze into his navel.

He looked so small, sitting on the ground, with his knees drawn up to his chest. There were still two greenish rings of bruises around his eyes and a strip of medical tape across his nose. He hoped the blow hadn’t done something to his brain. Or maybe that was down to the breakup. He hadn’t known Ken for long enough to be sure if this was a normal sulk or one that required attention.

“You doing okay?” he asked gently.

“You get time to think when you’re single.” Ken answered, staring out at the side of the barn, “Too much time.”

“I...see.”

“Is it like that for you? Just… _thinking_...all the time?”

“Uh...no?” Devon answered, screwing up his face while he tried to come up with a better explanation, “It’s more like...half thinking, half doing. Building things. Building things is good. You...wanna build something? Would that help?”

“Hmm. I dunno.”

“Well, you can think and walk, right? While we can still see the way back?”

“Sure.”

He helped Ken to his feet and they headed down the hill, darkness close on their heels. 

“Okay, okay!” Ken said excitedly, after a bit more thinking, “I got it.”

“Yeah?”

“So, I find a nice flat stone, right?”

“...okay.”

“And then I carve it, with a chisel or...that’s what sculptors, use, right? When they’re cutting marble?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, so, I carve the stone. Then I bury it where no one’s digging any time soon. And _then…_ ”

He did a drumroll on his thighs. 

“Some arr-kay-ologist digs it up a thousand years in the future and it says ‘Kilroy was here.’”

“Oh my God.”

“And then they’ll know _we_ was here. That _somebody_ was here, even if nobody’s around to give a damn about who we were. That we existed, though the dark swallowed us up.”

“You’re going to play a prank on people in the future who will have no idea what the joke _even was._ ”

“Damn right I am! And hey, you don’t know Kilroy won’t be around a thousand years from now. Guy’s everywhere. He’ll survive.”

Devon shook his head with a chuckle.

“You know what?” he said, turning back to Ken with a defiant grin, “I _hope_ so.”

“Hey” Ken said, shrugging, “Ain’t nobody alive right now can prove me wrong.”

-

“ _One_ u-boat, I said. One _goddamn_ u-boat and then we go home with a fat paycheck for sitting on our asses for months.”

Ken chucked another piece of luggage down the line. Devon handed the next over.

“Hey, I’m sorry too.” Devon said.

Ken held the duffle bag he’d been handed for a moment.

“Doesn’t seem real, does it?” he asked, momentarily looking sadder than he had after Brunhilda had broken up with him.

“ _Lisowski!_ ” the man next in line to him snapped.

“Fuck you.” he snarled, tossing the bag over more roughly than necessary.

“No.” Devon agreed, taking the next piece of luggage from the man next to him and passing it along, “It doesn’t.”

He tried to imagine what it was like, waking up in what you’d thought was going to be a quiet morning in paradise to find your post wreathed in fire, enemy planes streaking across the sky like comets. The thought occurred to him that maybe it was better they’d come to a frozen island after all, but he didn’t dare to give it voice.

But what was going to happen _next?_

He was afraid - of what the world was falling into, of where they were going, of the future that looked like nothing but a black hole from his vantage point. Silently, he added his own hum of anxiety to the note running through each and every one of them. But beneath all of that was the feeling that he was leaving something precious behind.

Their orders had come so suddenly that he hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. 

He wondered if Einar was going to be alright. If _he_ was going to be alright with an Einar-shaped hole in his life. 

“Keigley!”

“Oh!”

He snapped out of it and took the next bag.

Maybe he couldn’t say goodbye in person, but…

He had someone to write to now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Fun Fact: “The only living things the island had in abundance were sheep and ponies, and the Marines never developed a taste for mutton and were forbidden to ride the runt-sized steeds.” - _The United States Marines in Iceland, 1941-1942_
> 
> History does not record who rode the ponies.
> 
> \- Here’s [a really cool video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTleHIihGGY) that shows off the navy trade schools of the 1930s. And also a group of sailors cheerfully desecrating ruins a thousand years older than them. Oh, those rascally boys. 0_o
> 
> \- [A fascinating (and short) eyewitness account](https://www.icelandicroots.com/post/2014/11/11/the-war-years-in-iceland-through-the-eyes-of-a-child) of the British and American occupations of Iceland, from an Icelander who lived through them as a child. Her parents put up with a SO MUCH. >u<;;
> 
> \- Fun Fact: Hyperkinetic Impulse Disorder was the original term for ADHD. It wasn’t officially included in the DSM until 1968, but had been known of since the early 1900s.
> 
> \- Sad Headcanon: it makes Delta happy whenever Sinclair calls him “kid” because he kind-of-sort-of remembers Ken calling him that.


	3. The Frozen Triangle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war is over and everyone has settled comfortably into their postwar lives. But they’re up for one more adventure before they get _too_ comfortable. What could possibly go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- CW: none.

**Reykjavik, 1956**

Ken burst into a smile the second he saw him.

“Heeeeeeeeey!” he yelled, jogging across the tarmac to meet him.

“‘Eyyyyyyyy!” Devon answered, meeting him halfway.

He dropped his suitcase and squeezed him in a quick hug.

“Look at you, kid!” he exclaimed after he’d pulled back, “Haven’t grown an inch...except in the belly.”

“Hey!” Devon complained, dodging the finger Ken was trying to poke him with.

“It's all that goddamn mutton, I'm telling you. Eh, but look who’s talking."

He slapped his own belly. It definitely wasn't the belly he had a decade and a half ago. 

"But nevermind that! How’ve you and the old coot _been?_ ”

Devon picked up the suitcase and cracked a big smile. 

“C’mon, the truck’s this way. And to answer your question, well! _Very_ well. I wrote you about that American grant, right?” 

He paused to see if anyone else from the plane was listening. When he sighted no obvious eavesdroppers, he put a hand to his mouth, lowered his voice and said “CIA, very hush-hush."

Ken nodded. 

"Right you did!” 

Then frowned, putting his thinking face on. 

“Though...not in so many words."

"Point is,” Devon went on, his enthusiasm undulled, “we’ve got a workshop now.”

He hefted the suitcase into the back of the pickup and closed the hatch. It was heavier than its size suggested. The thought that _it_ was in there crossed his mind. Was he relieved that he’d brought it or anxious that they might need it? He wasn’t sure. He turned around, his smile undimmed.

“A _proper_ workshop.” he said, gesturing grandly, “I’m telling you, you don’t realize how confining a double car garage is until you’ve got 12,000 cubic meters of factory floor to spread out on.”

Ken whistled a low note.

“I’ll bet.”

“I can’t wait to show it to you. And what we’ve been _building_ there...I did most of the metalwork and Einar worked hardest on the electronics, though there definitely were ideas going both ways. And last month we painted it in this coating that’s supposed to make it invisible to radar. So far it seems to be _actually_ working? Which is _really_ interesting, because”-

“Ha.” Ken interrupted, with a smirk, “Nerd.”

Devon glared at him, half serious.

“Oh no!” Ken said defensively, putting his hands in the air, “I meant it as a _compliment._ Nerds’ll rule the world one day. I’m just getting my dues in while I can, right?”

Devon chuckled.

“Of course you are.”

They piled into their seats. Devon attempted to start the engine. It roared, but nothing happened. 

Ken snorted. 

“All those fancy doodads in the shop and you’ve still got this old thing.”

“She is a _fine_ vehicle, I’ll have you know.” Devon protested, trying it again, “Who...sometimes requires a push. If you might possibly…?”

“Ooh, putting me to work already. And me being all jet-lagged too…”

“ _Ken._ ”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

Just about the only part of the truck that was original was the chassis. Repairing it was something akin to an act of meditation for him. They could have so easily bought a new one with the grant money, but he was resolved to keep this one until it was totally and completely beyond repair. It was fun to spend an evening figuring out what part of it had broken down this time and then nurse it back to life. He was half-hoping he’d set some kind of record. Longest working lifespan of a shitty truck.

“So” Devon said once they were on their way, “How’s Kiki?”

He knew full well of the deluge he was asking for. He wasn’t disappointed.

Ken’s eyes lit up.

“She just turned five!” he yelled over the noise of the gravel beneath the tires, “We had a Mickey Mouse birthday party and I made all these crepe paper ears - oh god, you need to see the pictures; I brought a few - and June made this _fantastic_ cake. She can count to twenty now, you know! Uh...Kiki, not June. June counts higher than that, yeah? She’s so smart - definitely didn’t get that from me, ahaha - and the other day she drew this just _lovely_ picture…brought it too, told her she’d be an _internationally_ renowned artist now...”

Devon grinned as he let him ramble on, with no end in sight. He’d forgotten how much he’d missed this.

-

“So we’re in the Java Sea and they’re raining hell on us and I’m just trying to keep our collective head over water, right? And I’m doing alright, all things considered. Not exactly taking ground but not losing it neither. And THEN. This...this _goddamn_ kamikaze asshole crashes his ass not twelve yards behind me.

“I go _flying_ from the blast. I crack my head on something - the railing? my own gun? - whatever it is, I’ve got the dent in my head to prove it - bitch to trim over it, whatever you do there’s always this uneven patch of hair. So! So. I’m out for God knows how long. I don’t know shit about shit. I don’t even know who the shit I am.

“But I open my eyes and the one thing I do know - you ready for this? - is that there’s this _second kamikaze asshole_ bearing down on us at 12 o’clock. So I’m dragging myself back to my gun by the feel of the floorboards and I know I’m not going to make it. I’m moving like a snail and there’s all these flashing colors in front of my eyes. But I gotta try, yeah? Can’t die without trying.

“I get to my gun and pull myself up by the handles and - I black out. _Thunk._ On the deck. Like a dead fish. I think ‘This is it. Wish I could’ve died doing something more fun. Wish I could’ve _had_ more fun before biting it. Or taken my death standing up, at _absolute_ least. God, this is stupid.’ And just when I’m making peace with the Everlasting, I open my eyes - you know what I see? - the goddamn _Turd Chaser Third Class_ from San Di turning the asshole into swiss cheese!”

Ken clapped Devon on the back.

“I don’t cry too often, man, but _man_...I cried right there and then.”

He looked like he was about to start crying again. Devon topped up his glass. He downed it in one swig and immediately perked up.

“Dee-von!” Einar cried, nearly knocking over his own drink, “You never tell me this!”

Devon flushed.

“Anyone would have done it.” he said slowly, the alcohol making his tongue heavy, “I mean...unmanned gun...plane that needs shooting...it’s...what? Addition? Learned that in elementary school.”

“And got a Navy Cross for!” Ken interjected, draping his arm around his shoulder.

“ _What?_ So many secrets, Dee-von! And here I think I uncover most of them...”

“I”-

“He’s modest as _fuck._ ” Ken slurred, leaning just a little bit too heavily on him, “Give him a compliment and he’ll tell you it’s horseshit.”

“Whaaaat?” Devon said exaggeratedly, pushing him off, “No way. I don’t always”-

Ken slapped his knee and laughed hard enough that tears ran down his face. 

“See! Goddammit, he’s doing it _right now._ ”

-

“Einar’s fun for an old coot!”

“ _He can hear you!_ ” Devon hissed, “The walls”-

“Can he?” Ken interrupted, a pensive look on his face, “Thought he was half deaf.”

“Ja?” Einar called from down the hall.

“HEY EINAR! I SAID, YOU’RE FUN FOR AN OLD”-

“The _neighbors,_ Ken!”

“What _neighbors?_ You live in the middle of the asscrack of no”-

“The _grebes._ They’re nesting just outside, on the shore. Mama grebe needs her beauty sleep.”

“Ohhh.” Ken moaned with great regret, “Mustn’t grieve the grebes.”

“ _A_ ggrieve?” Devon asked. 

“The hell’s the difference?”

“You grieve for the dead. You _a_ ggrieve the living.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t start with G, does it? There’s no al-it-er...what is that _word?_ ”

“ _You…_ oh my God, we both need to go to bed. Here. That’s the guest room.”

Ken stumbled inside. Devon followed and closed the door behind him.

“So.” Devon said, his manner abruptly changing, “Did you bring it?”

Ken looked at him blearily for a second, then nodded and turned to his suitcase, which Devon had deposited on the bed earlier. After pulling a stack of neatly folded clothes out (likely June’s work. In the past, Ken had stuffed things willy-nilly in his luggage and then sat on it to make it close) and tossing them haphazardly on the bed, he withdrew something lumpy bundled in a pair of striped boxers. With a care greater than his big hands suggested possible, he unwrapped it and set it on the bed. The box of ammo was swaddled in a second pair of boxers. 

They both peered over the gun with a look of apprehension. 

“Do you think we’ll need it?” Ken ventured.

Devon shook his head.

“I don’t...know.”

“Think we’ll run into...I dunno, Reds?”

“Maybe?”

“Smugglers? Pirates? No...Vikings. Is it _Vikings,_ Keighley?”

“It… _could_ be, for all we know. Sailing through time, raiding armed transports. The usual.”

“Oh God.”

Devon snorted, easing the tension in the room somewhat.

“I’m sorry. I...really don’t know. I don’t even know if there’s _people_ involved at all. Hell, it might just be a _natural_ phenomenon. Ocean magnetism or...something.”

Ken gave him a peculiar look.

“That’s...not much of a reason to smuggle a firearm across international lines. C’mon Dev. That’s not like you.”

Devon sat on the spare chair that was on the opposite end of the small room from the gun. 

“It’s just...odd.” he said, furrowing his brow, “The whole thing’s so _odd._ I...can’t explain it. Not as well as Tryggvisson, anyway. You’ll meet him tomorrow.”

Ken thought for a moment.

“That coast guard with the chip on his shoulder?”

“Yeah.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“The point is” Devon went on, “that I’d rather be _with_ than _without_ it. Just for peace of mind. If I’m wrong, _great!_ If I’m right, well, we’re not unprepared. Just make sure Einar doesn't know you have it. He... he'd rather not have weapons in the house."

"Right."

"So!"

Devon heaved himself out of the chair.

"The meeting’s at 1300 hours tomorrow. How's that sound? Should give us a little time for sightseeing before getting into it."

Ken chuckled.

"God. Never thought I'd be coming back to this rock for _sightseeing._ "

"Oh c'mon, it's changed since then. There's shops now. And...they’re showing more than weird Swedish movies."

"And sheep."

"Always the sheep with you."

"Do they still outnumber people?"

"Well…"

Ken thought for a minute and then snapped his fingers.

"I’ve got it! The ponies! That's what I want to see. For old time's sake. Know anyplace good for that?"

"Hmm…” Devon said, thinking on it, “There’s a dude ranch, I think...ten miles off from here? Haven’t gone there myself yet. It hasn’t been there terribly long. I think we’re kind of big for ponies, but horses”-

“A _dude ranch?_ ”

“What?”

“Damned if I haven’t lost all interest in it now.”

“ _Ken…_ ”

He sighed as he rewrapped his gun and planted it back in the bottom of his suitcase.

“It just ain’t the same, doing it when an angry farmer ain’t chasing you down a hill.”

Devon shook his head with a chuckle.

“Eh” Ken said, waving his hand dismissively, “I’ll keep on thinking. You rest up. ‘Less there’s something else you don’t want the old coot to hear?”

“No, no. That was it.” 

"G'night Dev." Ken said, yawning halfway through.

“G’night Ken.”

Devon made a move to leave, but stood in the doorway for a moment longer.

"Ken…" he said.

“Yeah?”

"I...just wanted to say ‘thank you.’ Really. I'm...so glad you agreed to this."

Ken smiled.

"What are friends for? 'Sides, I was spending too much time in that office anyway. Needed some fresh air. A touch of adventure. Won’t be long before we’re old, you know. Why not get some good stories to tell before then?"

Devon shook his head with a smile.

“How is it that you’re more morbid than me? Every time, I swear.”

“Hey now” Ken said defensively, “I might not be single, but that don’t mean I haven’t stopped _thinking_. Thinking’s important. Don’t you _think?_ ”

“Goodnight, Ken.”

-

In the morning, Ken decided on a hike to the site of their old camp.

It was little more than a level field of tall grass now. He’d tried to pick out the spot where their bunker had stood, but was unable to be certain, with none of the identifying landmarks surrounding it left. 

But here and there, if he looked closely, there were clues as to what had once been. Holes in the ground where posts had once stood. Half-buried debris, overgrown with grass. At one point, he dug up an old canteen, filled with dirt, covered in rust and eroded beyond repair. Devon said he’d take it home and find a better place for it. Ken assumed he meant the trash. He’d gotten so _pissed_ , back in the day, whenever someone had so much as dropped a candy wrapper on the beach. 

The trenches were definitely still there, though they were as overgrown as the rest of the place. The two of them sat on the edge and had a late breakfast of cold pastries and sausage. The sun glittered on the bay, as though nothing had changed at all. 

Ken was happy, even if hadn’t been anywhere near as exciting as racing bareback down a steep ridge, angry farmers on his heels.

And now they were _here._

Not that he had anything against the workshop, of course. It _was_ impressive, with its curious machinery and dustcloth shrouded mysteries. As roomy as he’d said, too. More, actually. He hadn’t been entirely clear on how big a cubic meter was earlier.

No, the problem was that _Tryggvisson_ was in it. 

He was tall and blond and haughty and had one of those faces that just _begged_ to be punched. And rude. He couldn’t forget rude. 

"So, to catch up for the American"- he was saying, looking through Ken as though he weren’t there, sitting on a stool five feet away from him.

His mouth was moving before he had any idea what was coming out. 

"Thee Am-eri- _can._ " Ken mimicked.

Tryggvisson fell silent. He glared at him. 

Devon put his head in his hand. 

He felt a slight pang of regret for embarrassing Devon, but really, hadn’t it been the guy’s own fault for asking for it?

"It's Lisowski." Ken went on, glaring right back, "'The American' - please. If we're gonna to be cruising the North Atlantic for a week, we use names, yeah?"

Tryggvisson took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

“To catch up for _Mr. Lisowski_...” he said, fixing Ken firmly in his icy-eyed stare, “within the past ten years, vessel loss in the area of the Atlantic south of Reykjavik has more than tripled. Commercial, private, military - all nationalities - all types of transport - all of them have taken losses beyond that which would have been sustained before the war. Now, I see you thinking, Mr. Lisowski. ‘More ships in the postwar economy makes for more losses.’ Am I correct?”

“Well…” Ken answered, screwing up his face in thought. Actually, he was still trying to process everything else he’d just said. 

“That may very well be so.” Tryggvisson went on, without pausing, as he paced in front of the beat up card table upon which there was a stack of papers and some kind of recording device, “I confess, I have little evidence to the contrary - but there is _another_ peculiarity to the problem.”

He stopped pacing and leaned on the table. 

_Oooh, he’s building suspense,_ Ken thought, _Suspense is interesting._

“Sail ten nautical miles from shore and radios become near-useless. Equipment fails without rhyme or reason. There are many, _many_ recorded instances of ships _within sight_ of each other being unable to contact one another in the _Rólegt Svæði_ \- uh…”

He paused for a second, a distant look on his face as he tried to come up with the best way to translate it. It was mildly satisfying, seeing him fumble, if only for a little bit. 

“That is...the ‘Quiet Area.’ The nickname given it among the _Gæslan,_ the Coast Guard. There is an unwritten rule among us not to repeat it within earshot of civilians, though the local fishermen and the workers onboard the commercial ships that pass through our harbor frequently are not unaware of it. International shipping lanes have been rearranged around it. The Althing has approved laws limiting the amount of local traffic permissible through it. It is not a small problem.” 

He sighed and his face fell. 

_Oh?_ Ken thought, _He_ does _have some human feelings in there?_

“Which is perhaps why we have been unable to do much to solve it. The Rólegt Svæði is vast. Had we the spare vessels to map it, I am sure that it would take years before the project approached anything close to finished. No, it is better to avoid it as completely as possible. Minimize losses. Keep those we are able to, safe.”

Ah. But they were still talking about this, weren’t they?

“But?” Ken asked, a wry grin forming on his face. 

For the first time, Tryggvisson made what might have been a smile back.

“Ah, _but_ ” he went on, an edge of excitement creeping into his voice, “one month ago the guard received a distress call from _within_ the Rólegt Svæði. Some parts of it are not so quiet as others. Though...the call was not entirely intelligible and the _source_ of the distress was unclear. But!"

He put his hand on the recording device.

"We _were_ able to secure…this."

He pressed a button. The suspense was killing Ken. How good would this guy have been if he’d been an actor instead? Maybe marginally less high-and-mighty, depending on how well paid of an actor he was. Or maybe he’d just be worse. Probably worse.

His thoughts were interrupted by a horrible crackle of recorded static and what sounded like voices speaking behind it. Slowly, they congealed into something more intelligible. 

“ _...ayday, Mayday, Mayday...the Ice Beagle. This is the...the Ice Be...My position is 62° North, 22° West. My vessel is…what? That doesn't make sense._ ”

A long section of static. Garbled, twisted speech. It was hurting Ken’s head, trying to decipher it.

The same voice: " _It shouldn't be there… do you see them?_ " 

A crash, or perhaps a trick of the static.

Another voice, so quiet and filled with fear that one had to strain to know it was there: " _...they're watching us…_ "

Tryggvisson turned the recording off. Ken felt as though there were icy fingers walking up and down his spine. 

"She was the _Ice Beagle._ ” Tryggvisson said solemnly.

_No shit, Sherlock._ Ken thought. He’d successfully stopped it from going out his mouth this time. _Good job, me._

“British fishing vessel. Never made it to port - ours or that of our neighbors. We searched the area around the coordinates she gave in her final message and found scant wreckage, though we were unable to confirm that it was hers. That was to be the end of the matter. One more disappearance in the Rólegt Svæði."

"Until we came in." Devon chimed in, pulling away from the hulking dustcloth-covered thing he’d been leaning on.

Tryggvisson clapped his hands once. He was definitely smiling now, with his perfect, white movie-star teeth. Ken still wanted to punch him.

" _Ja!_ ” he said, stepping toward the thing, “What Herjólfsson and Mr. Keighley have is what the coast guard do not. Show him."

Ugh. Where’d he get off ordering Devon around in his own workshop?

Seemingly unaffected by the coast guard’s rudeness, with one swooping motion, Devon pulled the dustcloth off. Ken wasn’t sure what he was seeing at first. He got up and stepped a little closer to inspect it.

It was some kind of oblong metal ball, about the size of a Corvette, if a Corvette had been smushed into oblong ball form. Bolted into the front of it was one thick-glassed window and in the back, a pair of propellers.

"It's...a submarine?" He asked, running his hand across the matte grey, silky smooth surface, "Most bizarro sub I've ever seen."

"A deep sea submersible." Devon corrected, with more than a little pride as he polished the spot he’d just touched with the dustcloth, lovingly, "Single seater. Battery powered. Equipped with a video camera and film reel. Capable… _theoretically_...of reaching depths of 6500 meters. And headlights bright enough to pierce the abyss, of course."

It was good work, certainly. And it made Ken happy to see Devon so pleased with himself. But he still had no idea what it had to do with anything. 

“So…” he said, trying to pull his thoughts into something coherent.

“The mission is this, Mr. Lisowski” Tryggvisson interrupted, much more than a little excitement creeping into his voice now, “We seek out the wreck of the Ice Beagle, we document her condition, we find some clue of what caused her demise. And then? I do not know. But perhaps we gain a new weapon against whatever it is that makes the Quiet Area quiet.”

The two of them were looking at Ken expectantly. Ken just stared back. 

Damn. This guy was serious. So was Devon, for that matter. But he could sense that they were holding something back. 

“This…” Ken said slowly, making a vague hand gesture as he tried to put his thoughts in order, “This...isn’t...CIA approved, is it?”

Devon snorted softly and shook his head.

“Nor does it have the coast guard’s blessing...to be frank.” Tryggvisson added, with a wry smile, “Officially, I am on holiday.”

“We send them toys and they leave us be...for the most part.” Devon explained, with a shrug, “It’s an arrangement to both of our likings, or so they’ve led us to believe. The point is...we need a field test beyond what the CIA deems permissible. A real one - out in the _ocean_ \- not just in secluded fjords or uninhabited bays. And Tryggvisson here’s offered us a wonderful opportunity to do just that. So...knowing the full details now...are you _still_ in?”

Ken frowned. There was something deeply wrong about all of this. But _why_ , exactly, he felt that way, he couldn’t put his finger on. It was just as Devon had said last night. He didn’t blame him for wanting some firepower in his back pocket. 

“Hmm.” Ken said, rubbing his chin.

_Should’ve shaved this morning,_ he thought.

“I see what you mean about the...oddness. I don’t like it. Something stinks and it’s not you this time.”

“ _Hey._ ” Devon said, acting as though he were hurt, but forgetting to take the smile off his face, “I get blasted in the face with raw sewage _once_ and this is how he treats me for the rest of my life.”

Nah. That was only how he treated him when he wasn’t crabby or too exhausted to take a joke.

“Hm.” Tryggvisson said, looking from one of them to the other, “Fascinating.”

Ken chuckled under his breath.

“ _Kidding,_ Dev.” he said, “But seriously…”

He pursed his lips. He thought about June and Kiki back home. It was different, being a father. He’d become much less reckless after she was born. Settled down a bit. Grown up a lot more. Become much less averse to tea parties and having ribbons tied in his hair.

It frightened him sometimes, having something to lose. He loved them dearly, more than anything else in the world, but still, there were times when he wished he was unattached. Free to do whatever wild thing he wanted, consequences be damned. There was a motor running inside him that demanded that he _do this! do that! do it while you still have time!_ He thought he was going to pop from the energy it generated sometimes. When _was_ the last time he had really let it run? How long before he wouldn’t be able to do that?

“Okay.” he said, breathing out, “I’ve already hopped all the way across the pond and I may as well follow through, y’know? I’m in. I’m _still_ in. Tell me when and I’m on the boat.”

-

“See haf a nom?” Ken asked, half a dumpling stuck in the back of his throat.

He thumped himself on the chest. 

“ _Hem._ She have a name?”

Devon looked up from his plate, confused.

“Does...who?”

Ken realized he’d gotten ahead of himself again. His thought patterns _had_ logic aplenty, but to an outside observer, it didn’t always look like that was the case. Here he’d been daydreaming about them setting off tomorrow, which then got him thinking about spending time in close quarters with Tryggvisson (ugh), which then got him thinking about how much he _still_ wanted to punch him, which then got him thinking about the moment Devon had revealed the sub, which then reminded him that every craft had a name, didn’t it? And that knowing Devon, it was probably something he’d spent an age thinking up. 

“The sub.” he answered, “She’s gotta have some kind of codename, right? Some...super secret CIA shit.”

“Oh.”

Devon looked somewhat embarrassed.

“Muninn II.” he finally answered.

“Huh.” Ken said, “Does that mean it’s mooning whoever sees it?”

“ _What_ are you even on ab - _Memory._ It means ‘Memory.’ Because of the camera.”

“One of Odin’s ravens.” Einar added, not turning away from the pot he was stirring diligently on the stove, “He flies the world over. Seeks information for his master.”

“Ah.” Ken said, satisfied, “A nerd name.”

“ _Ken._ ”

“What? The best names are nerd names. You heard it here.”

“The Allfather is not this… _nerd._ ” Einar protested.

“Well…” Devon said, pushing his empty plate aside and leaning back in his chair, “He _is_ , foremost, a seeker of knowledge, right? Which is...what nerds _do._ ”

Einar snorted derisively and shook his head. 

Ken smiled across the table at him. Devon smiled back. Whenever he was right (accidentally or no), Devon backed him up and made sure that others could understand what he was saying. It was like having a thought translator around. Ken-ese into human-ese. It was a relationship he didn’t quite have with anyone else, June included. He just wished they could see each other more than once every few years.

After Ken had finished off the last few bites of his stew, Devon gathered up the dirty dishes and set to washing them. He tried to shoo Ken away when he came to help, saying something about how guests shouldn’t have to wash dishes but was successfully argued down when Ken explained that he wasn’t _washing_ the dishes, he was _drying_ them and therefore, it was totally fine. 

“So…” Ken said, making conversation over the drying rack, “There had to be a Muninn I, right?” 

Devon nodded, not looking up from what he was doing.

“She sank. Critical power failure.”

“Oh _ja!_ ” Einar said with sudden vehemence as he turned away from the stove, pointing a spoon covered in molten pudding at him, “With _you_ in it!”

“ _No!_ ” Ken exclaimed, giving him an incredulous look, “You didn’t write me about _that!_ ”

“It...hey, c’mon,” Devon said, dodging the glob of rice pudding that Einar had accidentally let fly, “It wasn’t _that_ big of a deal. I - what?- sat on my ass for an hour while you fetched a crane? Really, it wasn’t”-

“ _Dev!_ ” Ken cried out, not sure whether to laugh or cry at this news. 

It really was _just like him._ He kept his cards perpetually close to his chest. If he was having any kind of trouble, he neglected to speak of it until long after the problem had been solved. If he was angry or sad or scared, more likely than not, no one was the wiser until he let something slip in a funny story months later. 

The latter wasn’t even close to an exaggeration - if anything, he was being _generous_ with that timeline. It had literally taken him a full year and a half before he’d said a word to Ken about his family or the events that had led to his enlistment. Poor kid. 

“You sit in dark at bottom of bay with _one hour_ of oxygen and not the space to scratch your nose!” Einar ranted, shoving the spoon back in the pot with a surprising amount of anger, “ _Helvítis hálfviti!_ ”

Ken had no idea what that meant, but he’d said it with passion. 

“You scare me like that one more time…” he went on, softening just a little, but nowhere close to entirely, “I kill you myself, ja?”

Before he turned back to the stove, Ken noticed that his eyes were wet. He knew a little of Einar’s history and for once, decided it’d be better if he kept his mouth shut. 

“Sorry, Einar.” Devon said, looking a tad guilty, “I’ll be more careful.”

“Good.”

Ken had dried all the dishes. The only thing left was the pot the stew had been cooked in, with its dried-on meat juices. Devon was stalled for a time, putting some elbow grease into scrubbing it. Ken leaned over to whisper in his ear.

“Not a big _deeeal!_ ” he mimicked, in an absurdly high pitched voice, “What matter is a slow death in a confined space to _meeee?_ ”

Devon hung his head.

“Okay. Okay...fine.” he admitted under his breath, “It was...somewhat frightening. Happy?”

Ken grinned.

“Never.”

“Of course not.” Devon said, rolling his eyes.

The pudding was delicious. Just the right amount of cinnamon.

-

The Muninn II wobbled precariously on its cable. There was an equal amount of Icelandic shouting going on between Einar and the man operating the crane, who looked like he’d just walked off a package of fish sticks.

Ken, feeling like he ought to try to remedy the situation but having no idea how to go about this, leaned over to Devon.

“So...who’s this?” he asked, gesturing covertly at the fish stick man. Baby steps. Figuring out who he was, that was a good step for a baby. 

“Hmm?” Devon said, momentarily distracted by the argument himself, “Oh, that’s Svalbard. He’s a fisherman.”

_Wow_ , Ken thought, _A_ real _fishstick man. They do exist._

“Graciously allowed us usage of his vessel...if…”

Devon turned back to the argument, listening intently. He frowned.

“If Einar doesn’t piss him off too much. Hang on.”

He ran into the fray and added his own Icelandic shouting to the mix.

Ken lit a cigarette and waited awkwardly for people to start making sense again.

-

Devon made one last round about the house before locking up.

No more lights were on, the windows were closed, the curtains drawn, the gas turned off, the sink clear of dirty dishes. The dishes from that morning’s breakfast were still sitting in the drying rack, as though awaiting a meal that it’d be some days before its owners returned to cook. He briefly considered putting them away and leaving an _absolutely_ spotless house to come home to as opposed to a _mostly_ spotless house, but as they were already running just a touch later than he would have liked (the hassle with the crane was to blame for that), he decided against it. 

For a moment, he stood in the doorway, his old navy duffle slung over his shoulder as he surveyed his handiwork for a _final_ -final time. He smiled when his eyes passed over Kiki’s drawing on the fridge that Ken had proudly posted there the night before. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but it was colorful.

Then he closed the door and locked it behind him.

-

“ _Devvvv_ ” Ken said, drawing it out into multiple syllables as he panicked, “What’d you tell him?”

Devon’s face was red from laughing. Svalbard’s was about the same.

“That you called him a ‘fishstick man.’”

“ _Devon._ Hey, c’mon...that was between me and you.”

“He thinks it’s funny too.”

“Could you tell him I didn’t mean it? That I think he’s uh...a highly respectable fish _fillet_ man.”

Devon stopped laughing for a second and gave Svalbard a look, before translating. Svalbard laughed even harder and said something else he couldn’t understand. 

“ _What?_ ” Ken demanded, “What is it _now?_ ”

Devon snorted.

“He says you’ve got to stop doing this to him while he’s navigating. That you’re going to laugh us off course.”

“Oh! And that’s _my_ fault, now. Well...tell him...mm…”

“You run out of steam already?”

“Hang on...art takes time, yeah? Tell him...that it’s a miracle for a fishstick to be navigating at _all._ On account of a...being a fishstick.”

“Weak.”

“I ain’t seeing you do better.”

“Hey, I’m just _translating_ here. You gotta _provide_. Oh?”

Svalbard was speaking again and making shooing motions with the hand that wasn’t on the wheel. 

“He says”-

“Yeah, yeah, I got that.” Ken said, exasperatedly, “C’mon Dev, let’s blow this hot dog stand. Or...what do you _call_ a place where they sell fish and chips?”

“A pub?”

“Goddamn, it just don’t have the same ring. Urgh!”

When he stepped outside the bridge of the _Sjóormur_ (Devon said it meant something like ‘Sea Worm’, though why a person would name a ship after a worm was still a mystery that was beyond him), the shore was much farther than it had been when he’d stepped in. He remembered all the times he’d seen that same sight, over the course of the career he’d had before he’d ended up in an office where getting firebombed wasn’t a routine thing. It had always been a mixture of terror and exhilaration with him, setting out from port and watching the _known_ fall away behind him. The open sea was the ultimate freedom - _anything_ could happen out there, fair, foul and everything in between. 

He’d forgotten how cold it got, with nothing for mile after empty mile to break the wind. 

As though he’d read his mind, Devon nudged him and held up the thermos he’d produced from, it appeared, thin air. With a grin, Ken pulled out his flask.

They sipped hot chocolate and bourbon as they watched the known sink below the horizon. By the time the thermos was empty, there was nothing to see but the endless, blue expanse of the ocean stretching in all directions.

-

Tryggvisson had been playing with the dials on the VHF radio for something approaching an hour.

He’d been there when Devon had gone to bed and was still there when he came back up, forty five minutes of Svalbard’s snoring having been more than enough for him. At least, until he was tired enough to cease caring. Or maybe he would just spend the whole night in the bridge anyway. It was of a comfortable temperature. There was room enough on the floor to throw down a sleeping bag. Svalbard would probably step on him first thing in the morning, but that being a problem of the future and the snoring, a problem of the present, he found that he couldn’t really bring himself to care.

For now, Devon stood in the doorway of the bridge, out of the wind, in the warmth, silently keeping Tryggvisson and his shifting collage of static company.

“We’re...out of range, then?” he asked, finally, after listening to minutes go by without a broadcast to be heard.

“Yes.” Tryggvisson answered, not looking up from the dial, “I believe it so.”

Something in his gut twisted itself into a knot of tension at the news, as inevitable as he knew it was. It was official - they were on their own now.

For some reason, a cabin with the soundscape of a lumber mill didn’t seem half so lonely as a bridge filled with empty static now.

-

“ _Jesus,_ Dev.”

Ken was making a terrible face as he peered down the hatch of the Muninn II. 

“What?” Devon asked, looking up from his comfortable nest. 

“It’s...so _small._ ” Ken said, cringing, “You got space to breathe in there? What if you got an itch? Remember the other night? When Einar said”-

“Hey, it’s roomier than it was. In the first one, anyway.”

This was true - mostly. The leg room was definitely an improvement. A few inches really did make a difference, at least, to him. Still, it wasn’t as though Ken could have fit in it if he’d tried. The main problem was the battery - it took up nearly 2/3rds of the casing, leaving precious little room for the passenger and everything else. Shrinking it down was their biggest engineering challenge. Slowly, they were making progress on that front, but it was nowhere near where they’d wanted it just yet. 

In the meantime, well, at least they had a test pilot who wasn’t terribly bothered by close spaces and minimal leg room. 

“Are you _sure?_ ” Ken asked, still making that face. If he kept it up, it was going to get stuck like that.

“Lookit.” 

Devon extended his middle finger and bent it to scratch his nose.

Ken flipped him double birds in return as Einar sealed the hatch.

-

Ken yawned as he let the knotted rope slip through his fingers, one knot after another. This was the third time they’d done this today. It was getting old _real fast._

Einar stood by with his clipboard, counting the knots as they dropped over the side of the ship. 

“Mr. Lisowski” Tryggvisson snapped, suddenly popping his head out of the bridge, “I have lost contact. Signal him back.”

“What’s the magic word?” Ken asked, fixing him with a drowsy look.

For a moment, Tryggvisson looked confused. Then he ducked back inside without saying anything, magic or otherwise.

Ken tied the rope off and picked up the signal flag. Far in the distance, he could see the Muninn II bobbing on top of the water, the rope trailing behind it. It’d probably take him a minute to notice the flag. Odds were he’d notice a minute of radio silence first and then turn around to get the message. 

“So…” Einar asked, as he was in the middle of waving the flag with all his might anyway, “What _is_ magic word?” 

“Abracadabra.” he muttered under his breath.

-

Ten minutes later, Devon pulled up alongside the ship and heard the sound of something human-sized jumping on the top of the metal dome. It was quickly followed by the rattling of a chain and a muted voice yelling “ _Allt á hreinu!_ ” He half-wished he could see Svalbard making that jump, like a man half his age. The old man was more spry than him sometimes. It came with the job, he supposed. He knew a few fishermen well into their 70s who were still going as strong as they must’ve been when they were younger.

The Muninn II lurched as it was pulled out of the water by crane and gently lowered into its berth on deck. He saw Svalbard hop down from above in front of the window before it was fully situated. Madness. 

The second it was steady, he stood up, unscrewed the hatch from inside and took a breath of fresh air. The chill wind felt glorious in contrast to the warm, still air inside. Ken waved excitedly at him from below. Einar smiled as he clambered out. Tryggvisson seemed to be lost in his thoughts. 

“How far was that?” Devon asked, looking to Einar as he slid the rest of the way down to deck. 

“800 meters.” Einar answered, tucking his clipboard under his arm, “Give or take. Quite consistent.”

“Hmm.” Devon said, absorbing the information. 

Tryggvisson stepped forward, his brow furrowed in thought.

“A greater range than I expected.” he said, “But, ach, such a disappointment that we cannot reliably communicate _under_ the water.”

“We are _engineers,_ Tryggvisson, not magicians.” Einar said, looking faintly annoyed with him for more than the first time today, “We have no control over the efficacy of radio waves through seawater. No one does, except perhaps the Americans. But they do not share. So be glad that we communicate at _all_ out here.”

The Gæslan wasn’t exactly used to working with subs. On the world stage, their presence barely registered as a blip.

While the two of them continued to have the politest argument he’d ever heard, Ken sidled up next to him. 

“He’s just pissed he can’t boss you around _all_ the time.” he whispered, his stubbly chin brushing his ear by accident. 

Devon swatted him away, looked over at Tryggvisson, still arguing against the laws of physics and considered this.

“Y’know…” he said, wiping a swathe of sweat off his forehead, “You might not be wrong there.”

Ken always brightened at being told he was right. 

“So…” Ken asked, slightly embarrassed, after they’d left the debating duo behind, “How’s that in miles?”

-

The night was clear, the moon was bright, the ship was at anchor and Svalbard was telling a story over the remains of supper, beer in hand. His free hand was intensely animated. He was providing sound effects, rousing snippets of songs - it was a riveting performance. Everyone who was listening - even Tryggvisson - was enthralled, laughing raucously at some points, looking properly tense at others.

Ken had no idea what he was saying.

After enduring being metaphorically out in the cold for long enough, he bit the bullet, leaned over and asked Devon.

“It’s…”

Devon thought for a moment, deciding on how he was going to translate this.

“It’s about the escapades of old friends of his. Mostly drunken. Fairly ill advised. Uh…creative use of fish guts.”

Svalbard had gotten quieter now. The laughter had stopped. Tryggvisson said something that _almost_ sounded like reassurance as he patted the old fish stick man on his well-muscled shoulder. Devon listened, a touch of sadness creeping into his expression. After a time, he turned back to Ken. 

“They’re friends who sailed this way and never came back.”

-

There was a tension in the air as they prepared for the descent - the first _real_ , oceangoing descent the Munnin II had ever undertaken. Here they were - the site of the Ice Beagle’s distress call.

It looked no different than any other patch of ocean in the world. And yet, the thought of what had transpired here gave the wind an edge that it had not had before.

Devon dashed across the deck and clambered down the hatch of the Muninn II as fast as he could. If he was going on a longer dive, he always stripped down to his underthings - it was grippingly hot inside and he usually found himself covered in sweat within minutes of sealing the hatch. He’d tried using a shorty wetsuit before - made an effort to look just a _little_ bit more professional - but that’d been even worse than going in fully clothed. It was a sounder strategy to push the limits of decency as far as they would go and then make a run for a changing room when he got back.

But for now the warmth of the oversized battery felt good against his back, compared to the cold of outside. He settled himself in to his liking and yelled the all clear. 

The hatch slammed shut above him and all sound from outside was abruptly muffled. The only things he could hear with any clarity now were the muted whirr of the engine and the uncomfortable loudness of his own breathing. 

There was a jolt as the craft was lifted from the deck by crane. For a moment, he saw Ken and Einar waving at him through the one window that was his connection to the outside world. He waved back, though he doubted they could see him through the sun’s glare. 

Then he was lowered down over the side and with a sickening lurch, dropped. 

It was already getting hot. He flapped his undershirt collar like a fan, but it did nothing for the heaviness of the air.

“Testing.” came Tryggvison’s voice over the radio the second after he’d hit the water, “Do you copy? Over.”

Devon rolled his eyes. He really did love the sound of his own voice, didn’t he? Whatever it was, they’d probably discussed it not ten minutes ago on deck.

“Copy.” he answered, “Over.”

“Good. I want a three quarter kilometer radius sweep from your starting position. Over.”

“Got it. Over.”

“Hey, Dev!” Ken’s voice crackled on the second he was set to dive, “Why do fish sing off key?”

There was some kind of interference in the background. The image of Tryggvisson attempting to wrest the microphone back from Ken popped into his head and made him smile, despite how bad the joke was probably going to be.

“Why?” he asked quickly/

“‘Cuz you can’t tuna fish.”

Devon put his head in his hands.

“Get to _work._ Over.” 

Tryggvisson again. He’d won out in the end. But he’d plainly heard Ken laughing in the background that time. 

_Okay,_ he thought, _time to get serious._

He made the necessary adjustments, flicked on the headlights and sank below the waves. 

Slowly, as he watched through the window, the ocean floor - a vast expanse of barren mud and rock - drew closer. He stopped the descent several meters above it. The beam of his headlights vanished into the void ahead. 

He was alone. A speck of fuzz adrift in space, cut off from the clod of dust from which it had come. For a moment, he swore he could feel the ocean pressing down from above, crushing him beneath its incalculable weight. He felt a mixture of exhilaration and terror that this most definitely wasn’t a fjord. 

After taking a few deep breaths, he began his sweep.

-

“I mean...it’s not exactly a _surprise,_ is it?” Ken said, tapping his fingers on the galley table impatiently.

Tryggvisson sighed, blowing the hair on his forehead up in the gust of breath.

“No. I think not. There was nothing one month ago. Why should there be anything today?”

“The Iriminger Current...flows southwest through here.” Einar chimed in, turning from the stove, “She is dragged along it, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. But she was no small vessel.”

Einar sprinkled a handful of salt into the pot, gave it one more stir and took a taste. After making a pleased sound in his throat, he reached for the stack of tin bowls at the ready and dished up the soup. Good as his cooking was, it did nothing to improve the sullen mood that permeated the room like a damp fog.

They ate in a silence that was only broken by requests to pass the bread. 

“There’s three more days before we - no, thank you, I’m good on bread” Devon said at last, shooing away the basket Svalbard was proffering, “Before we need to turn back. That’s three more dives. Unless someone has a better idea of _where_ those dives should take place…”

Tryggvisson looked downcast.

“This is...how is it you say…” he said, “A needle in a haystack. Our luck would need to be exceptional, to find anything at all. A drop of water in the ocean.”

“Eh.” Ken grunted, stretching out his legs beneath the tiny table and into Tryggvisson’s personal space. Tryggvisson gave him a look.

“I ain’t got nothing pressing to do. I mean, if we’re out here already, we may as well _try,_ with the time we got. No harm in tryin’.”

“Definitely.” Devon added, “Even if we find nothing, that’s three more field tests we’ll have under our belts that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Two of us, at the very least, get what we came here for.”

“Three.” Ken said quickly, “I’m good on what _I_ came for.”

“Ha.” Devon said, “Tourist.”

“And fine with _that._ ”

“And who knows?” Einar said, “Maybe in future, we get _official_ permission to assist the Landhelgisgæslan, hm? Depending on outcome of this, of course.”

Tryggvisson smiled and sat up a little straighter. 

“Ach, such arguments. It is settled, then. Three more dives. Svalbard, heyrðiru?”

-

The ocean floor stretched before Devon, barren but for the occasional creature creeping beneath the beams of his headlights. He smiled at the long, ghostly legs of a crab skittering away into the darkness.

One of his own legs had cramped half an hour ago. He was doing his best to ignore it, but to be fair, it was the one few things keeping him awake. Sweeping the ocean floor was such warm, quiet, dull work that he wished Ken was on the radio with terrible puns. That’d definitely keep him awake. The pain of them might even overpower the pain in his leg. 

Just a little longer and he’d call it a day. Every dive was precious but this one, being the second last, felt just a little more so than the one he’d had the day before. 

And then the headlights alighted on something that was not natural. Something with a shape that was too angular to have formed on its own. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, it was still there. 

After he’d drawn a little closer, he flicked on the video camera.

-

“Don’t _fucking_ tell me it’s not a torpedo.” Ken said, a small amount of spittle flying out of his mouth in Tryggvisson’s direction, “I’ve _seen_ torpedoes. _Been_ torpedoed. It’s a _goddamn_ torpedo.”

“And _I_ say it cracked when it hit the ocean floor.” Tryggvisson reiterated, “Look at the angle.”

Devon ran his fingers through his damp hair. There was a towel draped around his shoulders. He was shivering despite it. 

He really needed to change before he caught cold. But he was so _tired_ that getting up out of the galley chair seemed a more difficult feat by the moment. 

As the argument went on, the ball of tension in his stomach tightened. Tryggvisson was _wrong._ The shapeless fear that had told Ken to bring a firearm over international lines oozed insidiously back to the forefront of mind.

“No. No, he’s right.” he said firmly, reaching up to snatch the reel of film out of Tryggvisson’s hands, “See this buckling? Torpedo damage. I’ve repaired its like before.”

Tryggvisson’s face fell. Ken didn’t look any happier for being proven right this time. Devon set the film on the table.

“But…” Einar said, cautiously breaking the silence from his seat on the other side of the table, “She is not Ice Beagle. She is...a casualty of the war, yes?”

“No.” Tryggvission answered, looking as though he were going to be sick as he picked up the film and jabbed a finger at one of the frames, “This half of the hull says ‘den Esbjerg.’ The Norden Esbjerg...I was part of the search for her. I had...barely been with the Gæslan two years, then. It all happened...in _1952._ ”

He put the film down, his face hard and cold. 

Nobody moved. 

“Beer.” Ken said flatly, “Anyone up for it?”

He went to the cooler before waiting long enough for an answer. 

“Who could do this?” Einar asked, his voice heavy with sorrow.

“The KGB?” Devon answered.

“Secret Service!” Ken yelled as he kicked open the galley door. 

His arms were occupied with the beer. Somewhat brusquely, he dumped them on the table and cracked open his own. It foamed over the second he did so and he shoved the entire top of the bottle into his mouth to stop the flow. 

Nobody made a move to touch the others.

“But _why_...” Tryggvison said, despairing, “...a Danish shipping container? Of all the...the _things!_ It had no state secrets, nothing to hide - only honest men making a living. I _know_ this.”

“We...don’t have enough information to answer that.” Devon said, trying to keep a level tone. 

He pulled the towel tighter around himself. It was too damp to help with the shivering.

“Einar.” Ken said, putting his half-emptied bottle down with a _thump,_ “Could you...I...don’t _really_ know how this works but could you, I dunno, from the footage here… _calculate_ the...traj...where the torpedo came from?”

Einar picked up the film and squinted at it. 

“Is...hard to say. Impossible to know conditions it went down in. How much it drifts.”

Devon summoned the energy to lean over and get a closer look. 

“West.” he said, his brow furrowing, “That ship...it’s too heavy to get much of a spin on impact. So… _probably_ west. I think that’s the best we’re going to get.”

“What do you want to do?” Tryggvison asked, his voice flat and emotionless, “Your decision.”

Devon nibbled the inside of his cheek and thought about it.

“One more dive.” he finally answered, “I’m...not expecting much. But...if we have the time…”

-

Einar cooked up a fantastic breakfast that morning - eggs, sausage, toast and good, strong coffee. Tryggvisson seemed a little less glum after he ate it. Svalbard taught Ken Icelandic sea shanties as they cleaned up together. Ken’s pronunciation was so awful it made Devon’s head hurt, but they seemed to be having a good time together.

And then it was time to go. 

Devon settled himself in, as had become his habit and yelled the all-clear. The hatch slammed shut over him. The crane hoisted him over the edge.

Ken waved from the deck before he was too low to see him and Devon waved back, certain that he knew he was waving, even if he couldn’t see him after all. 

“Hey, Devon.” Ken said over the radio, after he’d landed in the brine, “I can’t _sea_ you. _Water_ you doing? Over.”

“Listening to your worst ones yet, _apparently._ ” he said, with a laugh, “Over.”

“Well, if _you_ come up with any better ones, let _minnow_ , m’kay?”

Devon groaned.

“ _Sea_ you on the other side, Ken. Over.”

He listened to Ken laughing on the other end until the weight of the waves cut his voice off.

-

Devon checked his watch. The numbers and hands glowed green in the dim light of the Muninn II’s interior.

It’d been forty-five minutes. It felt like much longer. Time moved strangely down here, with what little sunlight that reached below telling him nothing of the passage of the sun across the sky and the feel of the canned air in the sub never changing. Sometimes he blinked and found that half an hour had passed. Sometimes a single minute stretched on into eternity. 

He figured it was time to circle back. Whenever he dove, he’d tried to stay within 800 meters of the ship - radio-able distance, if he had to surface suddenly - but it was difficult to judge exact distances down here. Add a stronger current to the mix and it became even more difficult. So he’d started judging distance by time spent cruising in a forward direction. It was time to take another turn. He _would_ have done so, had he not spotted the debris.

It looked like some kind of barrel, cracked open, overtaken by sea life and half buried in the mud. Not exactly an unusual or particularly damning find, but as it was the only man-made thing he’d yet found that day, he decided to go just a bit further.

The debris became larger. 

Twisted hunks of metal. Recognizable pieces of ships, at first few and far between but more densely packed the further he went. 

At first, he assumed that it must be the wreckage of a single ship. It was a sane hypothesis, one in keeping with what he’d found the day before. He kept moving forward, expecting to run into the ship itself any minute now. Maybe it _was_ the Beagle. Maybe it was just one more transport that _had_ been lost in the war after all.

He found himself following a slight incline in the ocean floor upwards. There was a momentary break in the amount of debris when it suddenly got steeper, likely owing to the effects of gravity. Or maybe he was just heading the wrong way and the ship itself was just a little to the left of his limited field of view. 

He was contemplating turning back when he crested a rise and saw _it._

His hands trembling, he flicked the camera on. 

The basin below was a graveyard. 

There were so many ships that they were piled on top of each other. Cargo containers, fishing trawlers, a yacht, cracked in two over a submarine that was green with seaweed, a seaplane, its wings crushed beneath the pressure of the deep. There was no end in sight. He moved slowly over the wrecks, being certain to record every name he saw. There were too many for a single roll of film - too many to _exist_ outside a shipyard, period. 

As time wore on, he slowly realized, with shivers running down his spine despite the heat of the Muninn II’s battery, that there was a light besides his own illuminating them. Hesitantly, he turned his headlights off. The glow remained. It was brightest just beyond the far side of the basin. 

The current pulled him toward the source, ever so gently. He could feel the force of it pressing down on him, drawing him in inexorably. His heart was pounding. For a moment, he couldn’t bring himself to go either forward or back. He drifted, until the basin wall forced a decision. Slowly, he piloted the Muninn II up and over the ridge. 

And there it was.

His eyes watered from the brightness. He closed them and the imprint of the image remained on the insides of his eyelids. Towering skyscrapers. Gleaming crystalline corridors. Spotlights scouring the deep.

One of them stopped on him.

Before he could move, there was a gaggle of crafts only a little larger than his speeding toward him. One bristled with harpoons. And strapped to the sides of the others…

Torpedoes.

Through the window of the harpoon laden one, he could see a human figure gesticulating wildly with one hand, while holding the other still beneath its chin. A radio. That person was yelling into a _radio_.

His hand hovered over his own radio dial. It wasn’t possible. And yet…

He turned the dial, searching for the right frequency. 

“ _-dentify yourself!_ ” the radio screamed, “I am an officer of Ryan Security and authorized to use deadly”-

He turned it off.

He screamed into his hands.

He turned the knob again.

“ _-so help you._ Over.”

The microphone almost slipped through his sweaty fingers.

“I’m...” he said into the mike, struggling to think through the screaming that was still happening inside his head, “I’m...lost. Really...incredibly… _lost._ Uh...over.”

“I’ll say, _ass for brains._ Do you _know_...goddamnit, _what?_ ”

There was another voice in the background, its words unintelligible, but its panicked tone understandable enough. The frequency went silent.

The thought of swinging the Muninn II in a wild loop and flying out of there as fast as her engine could carry him flashed across his mind. 

But...she was built for exploration, not speed. Her turns were too wide and from what he’d seen, the submersibles surrounding him were much faster. And...there was no way he could hope to avoid a torpedo, should they fire one after him.

He felt as though he were suffocating in the heavy air. Both legs were cramped now. His heart wouldn’t stop racing. He had to _think_ but he couldn’t hear his own thoughts over the wailing in his head. He slapped himself in the face. It didn’t help anything. 

And then one coherent thought _did_ get through. 

_The others._

What did he know? That the people of this place had no compunction against blowing up _anyone_ or _anything_ that drew too close. That they had no known loyalty to any government. That the others _were_ going to die, should these people get wind of their presence. That he would too, if he didn’t do something _very_ quickly. 

The window for getting out of this in a timely fashion was rapidly shrinking for him. But for the others...not so. Not _yet._

He had to draw attention away from them. He had to invent a reality in which they didn’t exist and _hold to it._ As for warning them, well, he’d find a way to cross that bridge when he got there. Not getting torpedoed was a start. But _how?_

He’d done this before, he realized. Shown confidence where none existed. Bluffed as though his life had depended upon it in a not quite so literal fashion. He could _do this._ He _had_ done this, so many times before. It was nothing more than slipping into a practiced routine.

The calm of a firm decision descended upon him. He breathed in, then out and took hold of the microphone.

“No. I _don’t_ know.” he ranted into it, “That is the definition of ‘lost,’ isn’t it? And…’ _ass for brains?_ ’ Is _that_ what you called me? You talk to your mother with that mouth? Some welcoming committee, you are. _O-ver._ ”

He released the button. His hand was still shaking. They were either going to shoot him right then and there or be just insulted enough to keep talking.

The radio crackled to life.

“Who…” the voice said, “Who _the fuck are you?_ ”

He waited a few beats before answering, to be sure that he wouldn’t be trying to go both ways down a one way channel.

“Like I _said_ , I’m lost. I’m a nobody who fixes ships for a living and builds shitty subs on the weekend. I had a hydraulics failure hours ago and I’ve been _trying_ to get control back before I run out of _air_ ever since then, but _no_ , the next thing I know I’m drifting down a ridge towards...what? What _is_ this? The goddamn capitol of the fucking _Morlocks?_ And then _you_ start hurling death threats over the...well, I can’t exactly call them ‘airwaves,’ can I? _You_ start hurling _death threats_ over whatever-the-fuck you call _airwaves that travel through water_ and you _see_ what kind of day I’m having now? So. There. That’s it. You _happy?_ Over.”

The silence on the other end was agonizing. 

And then someone laughed through a crackle of static. 

“Hey...uh...sorry...about all that. Why...don’t we...shut _up_ , Marston. C’mon. You heard that too. Where the _hell’s_ the fun in killing a guy who - nevermind. How about...I tow you to my boss’s place and we have a nice chit-chat there? _Mar_ ”-

The line went quiet. Just when he was about to ask if he was still there, the radio came back to life.

“Ho-kay. Just...hold _real_ still for a second. You got that?”

Before he could answer, the harpoon fired. 

There was a horrific jolt and a scrape of metal. For a second, he thought he was dead and that the ocean had already rushed inside to claim him. When he realized he was still breathing, he was moving forward without having touched the controls. Through the window, he could see a chain that was attached to the other submersible trailing above him.

The radio came back to life.

“Sorry about that.” the voice said, “Probably should’ve said something. Bathys down here usually have a magnetic hookup, but that wouldn’t have worked with you, would it? Hey...you’re not leaking, are you? Shit. I know what you’re going to say, Marston, so don’t you”-

He grabbed the microphone the second it went quiet.

“My hull integrity’s fine...for now. _Thanks_ for the warning. Over.”

“Anytime! Any _way_ , Marston wants me to tell you that if you do any funny business, we’re chucking you down Reykjanes Ridge. He’s a rude little cunt, but”-

Another voice plainly said “ _Hey!_ ” in the background.

-“we have to keep up appearances. For the job, you understand. _Capisce?_ ”

Devon’s heart was still pounding. All of a sudden, he felt exhausted. It took more effort than it should have to answer back.

“ _Si, capisco._ Over.” 

“Huh?”

“I _understand._ ”

“Ah! Over and out.”

With another jolt, they were on their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- A Riddle: Is a CIA spook still a CIA spook if the CIA has no idea what they’re doing?
> 
> \- Behind the Scenes: A diving bell (canon, but how is he getting inside without a horrifying depressurization accident?? and how is a ship getting that close to Rapture without being detected and stopped??), climbing down the lighthouse air shaft (semi-canon, pretty impressive, but I can think of no scenario in which that isn't a shoot on sight situation. "This cool guy climbed down our most vulnerable point! Let's let him in!" _sure_ ) and saturation diving (very cool, but runs into the same problems as the diving bell, as well as a few of its own) were all considered before fully committing to the submersible idea.


	4. Rapture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Devon accidentally becomes a media sensation and struggles to find a way to warn the others before they fall into Rapture’s trap too. An annoying paparazzo might prove to be more useful than he seems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- CW: drug use, gun violence, vomiting, internalized acephobia and a suicide mention.

He couldn’t look away.

It was disorienting and dismaying, having no control over where he was going and lurching this way and that on the end of a chain and yet…

Below him, elegantly dressed people moved through crystalline halls, pointing and gawping as he passed by. There were sparkling storefronts, lush indoor gardens, terraces upon which the patrons sipped cocktails and looked up to watch him drift through a school of glittering silver fish. 

Everywhere he looked, there was another thing more _gleaming_ and _beautiful_ and _perfect_ than the last and it was all so...

Impossible. He felt dizzy. He had to look away for a moment to steady himself.

“You’re awfully quiet.” the man on the other end of the radio said, “No questions?”

Devon swallowed the lump in his throat.

“I...didn’t know they were allowed.”

“They’re _not._ ” the voice that’d been campaigning for his death - presumably the one named Marston - snapped, “So don’t go thinking you can - _Gelb-!_ Dammit… _you_ ”-

“This is Rapture, friend!” the nicer one said as he merrily took over again, “Where the artist would not fear the scholar! Where the scientist would not be bound by petty mortality! Where the great would not be constrained by the tall! Where with the sweat of your brow you too can...shit, what was it again? Help me out, Marston.”

At no point in human history, Devon thought, had there ever been an explanation that raised more questions quite so exponentially. 

He tried to put it out of his mind and strained to listen to the argument he could half make out going on in the background. 

“If he’s a spook, he already knows, right?” the unnamed voice was saying, as though he were speaking from the end of a long hallway, “So shove off. My bathy, my rules. Get your own if you’re so hung up on it.” 

Devon jumped when he abruptly went back up to full volume.

“So, friend! What do you think? Is she beyond your wildest dreams?”

“I...would say that’s accurate.” he said slowly, as a whale momentarily blocked out the light from above. “Over.”

“Well, we’re almost there. Jonah! You in there?”

A new voice: “Aye-aye.”

“I need you to lock down the east end bathy depot. I’ve got a...a _guest_ heading in there. Alone. Don’t open it up until I get there. Over.”

“Whuh...h… _how?_ ”

“Bit of a security breach up north. We’ve got a handle on it.”

“Ohhh...no. _No._ ”

“Is it done, Jonah?”

A long pause.

A defeated “...aye-aye.”

They had stopped at the entrance to a glass tunnel. A chain drifted down in front of the window.

“You’re unhooked.” the unnamed voice said, “Can you nudge the gas until you get inside? Don’t worry about steering. There’s a...well, it’s like a straw, when you get close enough. Sucks you the rest of the way in. _Slorrrrrrp._ You got that?” 

“Yeah...I got that. Over.”

“Then I’ll see you in a few! Over and out.”

One of the submersibles broke free from the trio and scooted around the corner of the building. The torpedo-bearing ones remained, blocking the way back out of the tunnel. He went forward, trying not to appear _too_ in control of the Muninn II, but equally wary of bumping into the glass walls and breaking something that’d end it for him before he even got inside. Not that the Muninn II’s steering was all _that_ precise to begin with. 

But he made it to the other end of the tunnel and like the voice on the radio had said, the suction drew him into the hole in the side of the building. Something sealed behind him. It was pitch dark inside but for the glow of a few buttons and the numbers on the face of his watch. And then…

The sub bobbed to the surface and he found himself blinking through the window at the light of a brightly lit room filled with menacing bronze statuary. 

He put his head between his knees and sat in silence for a few moments, trying to gather enough wits to figure out what to do next.

When he felt well enough to sit up and face whatever was going to happen next, he realized that the switch activating the camera was still on. He flicked it off hurriedly, his mind racing with new anxieties. 

Built into the curve of the Muninn II’s floor was a hidden panel that concealed the film reel, accessible only to a finger small and well-informed enough to know where the latch, the size of a dime, was hidden. Below that was a combinarion lock whose combination could be changed whenever the operator wanted. Security had been one of the utmost concerns in the sub’s design. Einar had hated having to incorporate the CIA’s wishes into his own visions _so much._ To him, the Muninn had never been and never would be a tool of surveillance, but one of exploration. He certainly hadn’t been on his own in his resentment at having to kowtow to small-minded governments to get the things they needed to work. 

But now, Devon found himself more immensely glad of the security features than he ever thought he could possibly be. There was no guarantee that they _wouldn’t_ find the film and the suspect footage of this city’s crimes that it held, but...there was more than a good chance it’d remain hidden. At a bare minimum, it’d give him more time before they tried him for espionage, or whatever it was they did down here.

For a moment, he had the briefest of dreams of stuffing the reel down his boxers, of taking it from this city, of proving its existence to the world, of stopping the disappearances once and for all. Of avenging every loss that this place had caused the world to suffer. Of answering Tryggvison’s question and telling Svalbard, for certain, what the fate of his friends had been. 

Wincing, he quashed it quickly. There was no way they weren’t going to search him once he climbed out of here. He was getting ahead of himself. 

First things first: survive this day.

-

Opening the hatch from the inside on legs that were now completely numb was no small feat. When it was done, he hauled himself up to the roof with his upper body strength and sat there, stretching his legs, waiting to get some feeling back in them before attempting the climb down.

Above his head, between the massive, reaching hands of the bronze statues, dangled a chandelier that looked as though it were made of glass knives. On the other side of the room, the only exit was sealed off with a heavy, industrial door that was at odds with the elegance of the rest of the room. Beneath him, the pool through which he’d come was lined with slightly greenish marble and had an elegant set of matching steps leading down to the floor below. Not that they’d be much use to him. 

He wondered if it was more typical for the subs here to open from the side, rather than the top. More like a car. It’d be an interesting design, one better suited to people who weren’t much for climbing. Or had no use for docks. Be nice to have right about now.

When the sounds started coming from beyond the bulkhead door, he almost jumped out of his skin. Voices, thumps and creaks. It was happening. It was time. 

In a panic, thinking he was ready, he tried to lower himself down gently into the pool below but instead slipped and found himself belly flopping into knee deep water. When the door rolled up into the ceiling, he was sitting in it, spitting up ice cold, foul-tasting saltwater. 

There was a row of black-coated men pointing guns at him. 

His teeth chattering from the chill of the pool, he rose to his feet and put his arms up.

One of the men - a tall, gangly one with neatly slicked-back hair - was twirling a pair of handcuffs on his pointer finger. For a moment, it looked like there was a smaller pair of handcuffs pinned to his sleeve but no, he realized, it was a short length of decorative silver chain. They all had them.

“You gonna come quietly?” he asked.

The voice from the radio. Slowly, he nodded.

“Great.” he answered, flashing a smile as he tucked the handcuffs away, “I know you’re having kind of a _day_ and I’d like to do my part to not make it _worse,_ y’know?”

-

It had been four hours. Every so often, he glanced at his watch to be sure of the passing of time. To remind himself that he wasn’t trapped in a single moment that was repeating itself over and over again.

Hours of the same questions, repeated endlessly, phrased ever so slightly different. 

_Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here?_

_I’m a hobbyist. My father and I run a machine shop in Reykjavik and build submersibles on the side. I took it out on my own to test it, had a mechanical failure and got caught in a riptide. I didn’t know about Rapture. I’m alone. Really._

It was freezing in the interrogation room and he was already damp and barely clothed. He didn’t doubt that it was part of the tactic to break his will. 

_Well,_ he thought, glancing at his watch and remembering the day Einar had given it to him as a birthday present, _you aren’t going to succeed._

When the shivering had begun to interfere with his capacity for speech, someone had finally handed him a uniform coat. It was blessedly thick and warm. The chains jangled on his sleeves when he moved.

At the far end of the room, there was a balding, older man who seemed to be overseeing the proceedings. The other black-coated officers seemed to defer to him. They looked in his direction exasperatedly when it became obvious that they wouldn’t be getting any more information with the line of questioning they were on. 

The trajectory of the older man’s grumpiness was almost exactly matched by Devon’s own.

After a long enough time spent enduring the complete lack of solid answers, his thick eyebrows twisted in a frustrated knot, he left the room.

-

“I don’t like this.” Ken said, for perhaps the 30th time that day, “I don’t. _Like._ It.”

He was pacing furiously, getting ever closer to literally wearing a hole in the deck.

Tryggvisson was peering over the railing with a pair of binoculars. He didn’t turn to look at Ken as he spoke.

“I will tell you again; we stay where we are, he has a better chance of finding us on his own.” 

Ken sucked in a big breath through his nose.

“He has twelve hours of air!” he blurted out, his voice squeaking on the last syllable, “It’s been _six!_ This ain’t _normal._ He wouldn’t do it on _purpose._ He would’ve checked in by now, said some”-

Tryggvisson whirled around, his expression cold and stony, his binocular-free hand clenched in a fist.

“Well, _I_ am a ranking officer and I _say_ ”-

“OH, _great!_ ” Ken snarled, rolling his eyes as hard humanly possible, “A _ranking officer_ on a civilian ship! If we’re going by _ranks_ that nobody gives a _flying fuck_ about then _you_ should listen to _me_ because _I_ was a _goddamn_ ”-

Einar poked his head out of the bridge. Ken felt a sudden surge of regret for being loud enough to disturb him.

“ _Tryggvisson!_ ” he cried out, his glasses slipping down his nose, “ _Listen_ to me. What if he _cannot?_ It...has happened. In past.”

Ken exchanged a look with Einar and knew the same thought was going through their heads. A dead submersible on the bottom of a bay, with no way to contact the surface as the minutes ticked by.

Tryggvisson unclenched his fist and hung his head. He looked haggard. Truth be told, he’d looked as though he’d gotten two hours of sleep since waking up. But without the veneer of haughtiness to hold him together, he looked much worse. Wincing, he rubbed at a spot in the center of his forehead. 

“Keep...trying at the radio, Einar.” he said weakly, “I...I need to think on this.”

-

“He’s lying, Mr. Ryan. No two ways about it.”

“Of course he’s _lying!_ One does not find Rapture by _accident._ We have precautions. Fallbacks! What am I _paying_ you for? _Why_ did our radar not pick up on him _before_ he was at our very gates?”

Sullivan leaned back in his office chair. He counted to three before answering. 

“I don’t know the answer to that, sir. Not _yet._ I’ll run a full investigation on the department that designed it. But what I _do_ know is that he won’t crack. We’ve been at it for five hours. Kept his story straight the whole time. There’s not much more I can do without putting the thumbscrews on and…”

He peered out the window. If anything, the crowd gathering in the passageway below was bigger than before.

“...I would strongly advise against that.”

He could almost hear Ryan’s confusion in the silence on the other end. 

“And _why_ would that be?” he finally asked.

Sullivan took a deep breath.

“Half the city saw him when Gelber hauled him down the main drag. They think he’s some kind of adventurer...a...a _hero._ Slow news day, I suppose. But...the ticker tapes are running wild and there’s a herd of reporters squatting on our doorstep down here. We send him out there with broken thumbs or not at all...it’s a bad look. 

“And then that Lamb woman starts going off about ‘the Tyrant’ again, riles up God knows how many lowlifes and well...you know better than me that we don’t need any more bad looks. Not now. I’m stretched thin as it is, after that...last riot in the Drop.”

Ryan huffed on the other end of the line. A faint _tap_ as he set down the phone on his desk without hanging up. The faint creak of footsteps and the _ping_ of a nine iron striking a golf ball.

Sullivan waited. He had these little tantrums every so often. From what he knew of history and personal experience, they were a trait not exclusive to Great Men, but fairly common to them. 

“Then there’s only one thing for it.” Ryan said, through gritted teeth, when he finally returned five agonizing minutes later, “We _welcome_ him into our fair city.”

-

Devon was startled out of a doze when the steel door creaked open. The balding man in black was back.

"Alright, bub." He said, pulling up a chair and parking himself in it on the other side of the table, "Here's the 411. You are not to leave city limits. The bathysphere stays here.”

_The what?_

“You're not to _have_ a personal bathysphere unless the council approves it, a decision that is not up for review until you’ve got a minimum of two years of residency under your belt.”

_Years..._

“On a more immediate note, for the time being, we're putting you up in the Aventine until and _only_ until you've got your feet wet and some kind of income. After that, we'll send you the bill. Check payable to Ryan Industries. Any questions?"

Devon felt sick. 

"You're… _billing_ me?” he said softly, narrowing his eyes, “When I'm stuck here without even a pair of shoes?"

The floor of the interrogation room wasn’t as grand as the marble one in the bathysphere depot, but whatever stone it was made of, it did suck the warmth out of his feet just as efficiently. The man glanced down at his blueish toes dispassionately. 

He shrugged.

"No such thing as a free lunch, buddy. Anything else?"

There were a thousand questions racing through his head at that moment, but none of them seemed like a wise idea to say aloud. He pulled the coat tighter around himself, wanting nothing more than to shrink away inside it. 

Well, there was one thing he wanted _more,_ but that was seeming even less probable by the second.

The balding man stared at him for a few moments longer and when he didn't respond, got up and made a move toward the door. Before he got too far, he stopped, and turned back toward him.

"One more thing.” he said, the disdain in his voice scarcely hidden, “The free press has been clamoring on our doorstep for a look at you since you got here. The boss-man says it'd be a good idea to do a little press conference. Unruffle some feathers. All you have to do is smile, wave and keep your mouth shut. Got it?"

Devon nodded. There was a lump in his throat that he couldn’t seem to speak through.

-

“You look like shit.”

Devon glared at the agent. It was the one who’d towed him in, again.

“ _Thanks._ ” he said dryly, “You’ve been _very_ helpful with that assessment.”

“Uh…” he answered, taken aback by the acidity of his tone, “Name’s Gelber, by the way. And this is Marston.”

“Keighley.” Devon said, stiffly accepting his handshake. 

Marston made no move to follow suit. He had a pair of beady little eyes that followed his every move and a face that seemed permanently set in an expression that suggested he was smelling something rancid.

“Wait just a minute now…” Gelber mumbled to himself as he started patting himself down, “A-ha!”

He pulled a comb with a few broken teeth out of one of his inner pockets and handed it over.

“It’s kind of...swooshed to one side.” he said, indicating where the swooshing was taking place on his own, immaculately groomed head, “That’s better. And stand up straighter. Is it okay if I…?”

He pinched the shoulders of the jacket and straightened them out.

“There. A little less shit for the evening edition. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

Devon handed the comb back. His hand was shaking again. He couldn’t seem to stop it, no matter how hard he tried. Was it bad enough that others could see? Was it all in his head? He balled it into a fist and dropped it to his side.

“ _GELBER!_ ” 

Marston jumped. It was the radio clipped to his belt that had suddenly blared on at full volume. He made a sour(er) face and handed it over to his partner. 

“Chief says they’re ready.” it said, “Get in position.”

“You got it.” Gelber answered, before tossing it back into Marston’s fumbling hands.

Panicking, Marston managed to grab it by the antenna just before it struck the stone tile and cracked open like an egg.

“Show time!” Gelber sang, his voice trilling with a childish glee, utterly oblivious to the near disaster he’d caused not two feet away.

As they walked, he made finger guns and accompanied them with shooting sounds from his mouth.

For just a single, fleeting moment, Devon understood Marston better than he’d ever understood anyone in his life.

-

When the door to the lobby opened, he was blinded by a raging sea of camera flashes. After his eyes had stopped watering, he could see dozens of people jostling for space behind a barrier of velvet cord, all shouting a thousand jumbled questions at once. Gelber and Marston stuck close to him, their hands resting threateningly on their batons. Whatever levity Gelber had just had mere minutes ago had evaporated away as though it had never existed.

Devon pulled the coat tighter around himself, not caring that he was wrinkling it again. He felt exposed, naked - afraid. It was like his third grade Christmas pageant all over again. Only this time he couldn’t dump his wise man’s gift and run.

The balding chief was giving him a _look_ from behind his podium strapped with microphones. Devon shaped his face into the best approximation of a smile he could manage and waved the tiniest of waves.

“One at a time!” the Chief bellowed, causing one of his microphones to squeal, “You.”

“Evan Keating, Rapture Daily Post. How will this impact future security measures in Rapture?”

“That remains to be seen. It’s on the docket for the next council meeting. Next.”

"Munroe Bankcroft, Rapture Standard. Will this pave the way for increased contact with the surface?”

“ _No._ Rapture’s freedom is maintained by its secrecy. That isn’t going to change in the near, or any future. For the sake of our continued safety our… _guest_ will be remaining here, as a resident of the city. You.”

"Angie Muzio, Heller News!” a bespectacled woman with a notepad shouted, shoving her way to the front, “Hey Topsider! What’s your name?”

The Chief blinked.

Devon pointed to himself and mouthed “Me?”

She nodded enthusiastically, a gentle smile on her lips, her pen poised over her notepad. The crowd quieted down. He felt the presence of many, many eyes on him, not all of them friendly. Least of all the Chief’s.

Begrudgingly, Marston detached a microphone from the podium and made a disgusted face when he brushed Devon’s clammy hands in the midst of passing it over.

“It’s…”

As he was stepping back to the spot in which he’d been standing, Marston stumbled over the cord. The resulting squeal of feedback blocked out the rest of what he said.

“Unimportant.” the Chief finished, taking control of the situation again, “Questions relating to _security only,_ please. You. Do you have one?”

He was pointing at a drab looking man with a cigarette in his mouth.

Instead, a heavyset man with a voice that carried piped up from the back of the room.

"Harold Stockly, Science and You. Did you _build_ that bizarre bathysphere?"

The Chief made a face that implied he was minutes away from killing the man, but made no move to reprimand him.

“Ye-es.” Devon said slowly, hating how his own voice sounded broadcasted back at him, “The design is...half mine. And...she’s a submersible. Not a bathysphere. She’s self-propelled.”

“If we could get back on”-

The woman who had asked his name, her smile beaming: “How does it feel to be the discoverer of Atlantis?”

“I...don’t…”

The Chief was glaring at him with the fury of a flaming plane. 

It was then that he realized the only thing keeping him alive in this moment in time was the press’s interest. 

He had to hold it. 

He had to _keep them interested._

This would have come so naturally to Ken. He’d crack jokes about his state of undress. He’d let whatever insane, funny, wonderful thing that was in his head fly. He wouldn’t hunch his shoulders and shrink into himself. He wouldn’t be cowed by one aging police chief who behaved as though he were the porcupine he’d just sat on.

What if...he let loose? What if he stopped thinking so hard and just...called them as he saw them?

“It’s...not like I expected.” he went on, standing up a little straighter and puffing his chest out, “For some reason I thought there’d be a lot more mermaids.”

A smattering of laughter. The Chief’s eyes narrowed.

Being careful not to make the same mistake Marston had, he stepped out from between the two officers. He tried to imagine that he was speaking with distant friends he hadn’t seen in an age. Joking. Telling old war stories. Getting to know one another again. 

He smiled for real and said “What else have you got?”

A man in a tweed suit at the front stuck his hand in the air.

"Shay Kabbash, Do Tell Newspaper. How’d you make it here?”

“Dumb luck! Or...good luck, what with having met all of _you_...charming people. But really, one minute you’re testing out some new features for the heck of it, the next, you’re fighting for your life and five hours later, you’re swimming in fishbowl New York. Yes?”

A woman in a soft, blue overcoat: “Claire Dunnett, Couture. Where are your _pants?_ ”

“Ahhhhhhhhhh well, there’s not...exactly...a whole lot of time to pack for a trip when you’re getting swept up in adventure, y’know? It’s _comfortable_ , going without pants in the sub. Aw, don’t laugh. You’d do it too if you knew how hot it got in there.”

Giggles from the audience. A grinning woman with meticulously coiffed hair waved her hand in the air.

“Rekha Kanungo, Rapture Woman. Are you single?”

A crack in the illusion.

He bit the inside of his cheek. What was it they _wanted_ to hear? What was the answer that would purchase the greatest amount of goodwill?

A doctor had told him it was a medical condition once. More than one person had assumed he must _swing the other way_ , the possibility of there being another answer never once entering into anything approaching their orbit. Even when he’d told Ken, he’d said he hadn’t understood. Maybe it wasn’t possible for the people who lived in the hidden layer of society to understand those who dwelled without it.

He affixed his best approximation of a melancholy smile to his face.

“No...no, I’m afraid I’m taken. I have a fiance back in the states. I was...going to move back there next year and marry her. Ah, but now…”

He trailed off for dramatic affect. There was a smattering of sorrowful coos. It felt like a betrayal. Whether it was a betrayal of _them_ or _himself_ , though - that was unclear. 

He tasted bile. The second he got out of here, he really was going to be sick. 

The same woman: “What are you going to do now?”

He shrugged exaggeratedly.

“No idea! If any of you know where an out-of-work engineer can make an honest living, ring me up. In the meantime…”

He looked over at the Chief with a perfect show of innocence.

“I’d like to thank Ryan Industries for their fine show of hospitality.”

The Chief looked defeated. It was as though his hairline were receding further with every question. Devon turned back to the crowd.

“Yes? In the back.”

“Jones Favero, Magnate. Have you thought about _selling_ your story and...perhaps, establishing an enterprise here?”

“ _Huh! _” he said, planting a hand on his hip, “ _That’s_ an idea, there. Stay tuned to find out! Should probably get some shoes before walking into a business meeting, right?”__

__A few scattered chuckles._ _

__The tweed suited man again: “Any news from the surface?”_ _

__“Hmm.” he said, making a face as he tried to think of how he could possibly start to answer that one, “Say, how long _have_ you all been down here?”_ _

__“‘46 and counting!” a hoarse voice of unknown origin yelled from the back of the room._ _

__“Huh!” he said gain, before pausing for a moment to think, “Well...it’s still _there_ , as you can see. In one piece, more or less. Lovely weather. Fine people.”_ _

__From the corner of his eye, he could see the Chief desperately signalling him to stop, his gestures hidden from the crowd behind the podium but visible to him._ _

__“And...the Giants won the NFL championship last year.” he finished, grinning widely, “How about that?”_ _

__The unseen person who’s answered his question cheered and clapped wildly before going silent. Not too many people keeping up with surface sports, then. At least, in this crowd._ _

__A tall man in an immaculate suit stepped forward._ _

__“Jean Louis Roget, The Bacchanal Press.” he said, “Thoughts on… _parasites?_ ”_ _

__The oddest question he’d ever heard._ _

__“Like...flukes?” Devon answered, making a face, “Are they a problem here? More so than...up there?”_ _

__Gelber guffawed before quickly silencing himself. There were a few muffled chuckles from the audience. He’d definitely missed something._ _

__“Alright.” the Chief said, taking the moment to wrest back control for good, “If there’s no more _serious_ questions, I’d like to wrap it up here. Thank you and good rid...day.”_ _

____

-

“Hey…” Gelber said, turning to Devon just after he’d closed his submersible door behind them, “You’re looking kind of peak - OH FUCK NO, not the _seats_! Marston, _give him that bag!_ Right _n_ ”-

“It’s my _lunch!_ You’ve got cuphold”-

“ _You’re_ gonna be _my_ lunch if he’s sick on my new _seats!_ ”

“Gaaaaah!”

Gelber shoved the brown paper bag into his hands just in time. Devon retched. There was some kind of sandwich in there and an apple that didn’t deserve that. It had mostly been bile, but he felt like that information wouldn’t have helped matters. He folded down the top of the bag and turned to Marston.

“I am… _so_ sorry.”

Marston was still stuck in the position he’d been in when Gelber had snatched the bag from him. Slowly, he dropped his hands in his lap in defeat and fixed him with an expression of disgust that surpassed every single one of his previous ones. 

Gelber chuckled nervously.

“It’s...uh...it really has been a _day_ for you, hasn’t it?”

Devon gave him a blank look.

“Well...” Gelber said, “Let’s hope it’s winding down now, yeah? Next stop: hotel.”

-

Devon stared out the window, still transfixed by the sight of the city around, above and beneath him. There was so much to take in, at so many levels, that it was making him dizzy. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned back in the (admittedly plush) seat. That, and he really did need to eat something.

He’d figured out one thing, at least. ‘Bathysphere’ appeared to be a colloquialism that they applied to any vaguely spherical craft down here, regardless of accuracy. A catchy name, he supposed.

But as for how they communicated...

“Yeah.” Gelber was saying into the radio, “We got room A2107 reserved. Write it down, would you? And one more thing...”

It was possible to communicate long(er) distances with acoustics underwater. But that plainly wasn’t what they’d been doing. Morse code could be transmitted semi-reliably on VLF waves, but crystal clear voices were out of the question. And they’d reached him on the Muninn II’s VHF radio earlier.

There had to be some kind of network underlaid beneath the entire city - some system of wires and antennae and hell if he knew what else - that made it all possible. Not to mention whatever it was they had that drastically limited communication in an _at least_ 200 mile radius. What on earth _was_ this place?

“Be there or be _square!_ ” Gelber said, with a cheeky laugh, into the radio, “Yeah, I’ll see you at seven. Don’t forget the juice, y’hear? Over and out.”

Gelber snapped the microphone back into place on his dashboard and took hold of the wheel just in time to avoid taking out a glass passageway filled with people. 

Marston made a low sound in his throat and gripped the edge of his seat to keep from sliding off of it with the force of the turn. 

It would have been years before the Muninn could’ve pulled a move like that. On top of that, it was definitely climate controlled. And the inside of it was like a luxury sports car. Had Marston not been sitting on the other side, there was so much room that he could have laid down on Gelber’s prized seating and napped, no problem. 

He was actually _jealous_ of the stupid thing. Out of all the full range of emotions he’d progressed through today, _that_ was the most ridiculous yet. He was caught between internally laughing and crying at himself.

“Careful.” Gelber said.

“I would be if I was the one drive”-

“Not _you._ Mr. Topsider there.”

He swiveled around in his seat to face him. Devon’s blood pressure shot up another notch, as much at the thought that he was paying no attention to what was going on outside the window and the devious expression he wore.

“You _are_ clever. I’ll give you that. But you need to be _careful who you antagonize around here. Chief Sullivan’s got the ear of the goddamn prince of Rapture. The right word from him and _kkkkt!_ ”_

_He stuck out his tongue and made a choking motion._

_“ _GELBER!_ ” Marston shrieked._

_Like it was something he did every day, he turned around and pivoted on a dime, inches away from clipping the outstretched fingertips of a sharp looking statue._

_Stupid bathysphere._

__

-

When he finally bade the two of them goodbye and closed the hotel room door behind him, the silence felt deafening. There were no more eyes watching him. No cameras flashing. No one waiting for him to make the slip that was going to cost him everything.

He paced furiously, making guttural noises of undisguised dismay and tugging at his hair.

He had to warn them.

They were looking for him by now, he was sure of it.

But how?

_How? HOW? HOW?_

He picked up the receiver of the bedside phone. His hand was shaking almost too badly to hold it. 

If only it _were_ that easy.

Futilely, but with some satisfaction, he threw it to the ground and watched the rest of the phone slide off the table after it.

After that, he laid down on the bed and curled into a ball. 

When he felt well enough to sit up, he saw that the bathroom door was partially open and that there was a fluffy white robe hanging enticingly from its hook. 

Maybe it’d come to him in the shower.

-

It didn’t come to him in the shower.

But at least he felt a little more human now. The last of the press conference’s adrenaline had faded away in the steam and left him more exhausted than he’d been before. He flopped down on the bed and closed his eyes. It was so comfortable, after all those hours in the hard, metal interrogation chair and its frigid room.

But he was ever aware of the passing of time. Of the minutes being lost forever as the clock ticked away. 

He couldn’t give up.

But what else was there to do? There was a good chance the room was bugged. Even _if_ he could find a radio capable of reaching them (which also assumed that their system was capable of broadcasting to the surface and that the communication-dampening effect of the place remained constant, which frankly, were way too many assumptions to be comfortable with) the odds were that he wouldn’t be able to do so unless they were within a half mile of the city. 

By then it would be too late. 

A tiny submersible painted with a coating that made it invisible to radar could wander to the very edge of the city without being detected.

A fishing trawler with no such precautions had no hope. 

_Why_ did he have to peer over that godforsaken ridge? _Why_ couldn’t he have turned back with the evidence he had?

He already knew the answer to that, of course. It was the same reason Einar had gotten into his line of work. The same reason he’d left his place of birth and never once looked back.

He couldn’t bear to look at his watch as he laid there, dozing, every worst-case scenario running through his head as time spilled away like sand in a broken hourglass.

There was a knock on the door. He opened his eyes, the nightmares momentarily fading in the light of the bedside lamp.

Another knock.

It was an assassin come to finish him off. It was Gelber coming back to arrest him after they’d found the concealed film reel of all their precious secrets. It was Chief Sullivan with Ken’s head in a bag.

An insistent knock.

That was _ridiculous._ Assassins didn’t knock. Unless, perhaps, they were undercover. Then, maybe…

Okay, _now_ he was overthinking it.

Goosebumps rippling down his back, he heaved himself out of bed, crept to the door and squinted through the peephole.

There was a man that looked like a squirrel in human form out there. As if in a mad attempt to distract from his squirrelishness, there was the gaudiest, bluest butterfly brooch that he’d ever seen pinned to his lapel.

Holding his breath, he opened the door a crack without undoing the chain.

“Hey-hey!” the man said, flashing a smile filled with coffee stained teeth, “Stan Poole, Rapture Tribune. How would you feel about a”-

“No.” he said, making a move to shut the door.

The squirrel man stuck his foot in.

Out of all the problems to have right now.

“I’m not accepting interviews.” he said flatly, giving him the deadest of dead-eyed stares.

“Whaaaat? No.” the man said exaggeratedly, making a show of being hurt, “I’m not asking anything so _crass._ You’re new, right? Wouldn’t you like to see the town first?”

“ _Before having an interview in the morning.” he finished, mumbling tensely under his breath._

_Devon kept on staring. There was something niggling at him in the back of his mind._

_“How…” he asked, the answer dawning on him, “...did you get this room number?”_

_Gelber had made a show of swearing the receptionist into secrecy. With both bribes and threats. And also flirting, which he was definitely worse at than the other two._

_He thought back to how casually he’d said the room number over the radio in the bathysphere. Was it possible that this squirrel-man had some way of listening in on police communication?_

_“Oh, I have ways and _ways…_ ” he was answering, the gaudy gold watch that seemed too big for his skinny wrist gleaming as his hands moved, “You don’t ask a magician how they do it, do you?”_

_It was a long shot. A shot so long that he might as well be aiming at a target on the other side of the world._

_Devon softened._

_“But...I...don’t have anything to wear.”_

_The squirrel man’s coffee stained smile grew large enough to show off more of his crooked teeth._

_“No matter!” he said, “There’s this little...uh...boutique right across the plaza. Call it a gift, y’know...in exchange for the interview.”_

_Hardly believing he was actually doing this, Devon closed the door and undid the chain._

__

-

“That isn’t… _him_ , is it?”

“It _is!_ I’m _sure_ of it.”

“Oh, how _cute!_ ”

“He’s so little!”

“Hmm. Bet he isn’t little elsewhere.”

“Ooh! You naughty thing!”

“Think he’d be averse to...showing off?”

“ _Stop!_ Stop, he’s got a fiance.”

“Who’s a thousand miles away and’ll never see him again.”

“How I love a good tragedy! Purest form of art.”

“We haven’t had drama like this since, what? Cohen cut ties with Silas Cobb?”

“No, no...it’s _comedy,_ you ditz. Comedy is the purest form of”-

“Eheheheheh!”

“Shh! He’s coming this way!”

-

Devon set the empty glass on the bar. There were three women in gaudy, feathered costumes sitting nearby, watching him intently, their painted lips stretched into unnatural smiles. When he stepped away, they burst into giggles behind him.

He felt ridiculous. When he’d expressed concern about being recognized by other reporters while out and about (he was barely dealing with one as it was), Stan had plucked a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses from the shop’s display and said “Hey, if it works for Sups, why not give it a go?” Then he’d gotten excited about spirit gum and fake mustaches and really, that was taking it a step too far. 

But now he wondered if he shouldn’t have tried it out. He’d been getting knowing looks and blatant staring all night. Complete strangers had been coming up to say hello ever since they’d stepped off the bathysphere. At least one person had taken his picture and run.

The glasses didn’t seem to be doing much aside from giving him a headache. But then again, maybe him with a caterpillar on his face would be just one more thing to giggle at.

 _Be cool,_ he told himself, _Just keep on pretending you’re not in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the second worst possible companion and that disaster isn’t drawing closer with every wasted minute._

Easy.

He scanned the crowd for Stan. As easily distracted, pushy and loud as he was, he couldn’t lose him. But getting him where he wanted him… _that_ was proving difficult. The sanest plan he’d come up with so far was somehow convincing him to do the interview tonight rather than in the morning. 

But that plan had its own problems. 

_“I like to get to know a thing or two about a man before I interview him, yes siree.”_ Stan had said in the (actual) bathysphere over.

 _“What’s to know?”_ he’d answered, _“You already heard my life story, right?”_

 _”Sure did. Me and the whole peanut gallery. But what I don’t know is what makes you_ tick. _Who you_ are, _as a person. I gotta_ relate _before I can_ probe, _ya feel me?”_

Plan B was kidnapping. He was beginning to think that it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. 

His heart gave a jolt when he turned around to get away from another smiling face whose eyes were following him about the room and abruptly found Stan’s squirrely visage squarely in his line of sight.

“Johnny-boy!” he said, his cheeks flushed with drink, “Dry again?”

“You _know_ that’s not my”-

He shoved his own champagne flute into his hand.

“Can’t have that on your first night in the big city! No-no-no. It’s _your_ night! Drink it up!”

Devon tried not to grimace and took an obligatory sip. The rest was going into the plant that would probably be dead by morning at this rate.

“‘The John Doe from Topside…” Stan was saying, as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, “That’s what they’re calling you on the radio. Kinda clunky. But with a little editing, it’s got a ring to it, don’t you think? Johnny Doe. John...Topside? Johnny…”

His arm bumped into the oversized brooch on his lapel.

“Oh!” he said, looking down in surprise and hastily unclasping it, “Where was I?”

“Stan” Devon said, trying and failing to hide his frustration under a layer of firmness, “I’ve had kind of a tiring day and I was _wondering_ ”-

He’d only half been paying attention to the group of partygoers just beyond Stan’s right shoulder. They were talking amongst themselves, two of them egging the third one on to do something to the snifter in his hand. After some convincing, he’d lowered his pointer finger into the alcohol…

And it had burst into flames. 

Some of the champagne tipped out of the flute and hit the floor as Devon almost dropped it in shock. Stan gave him a curious look and turned around. The two partygoers were laughing wildly at the third, who was holding his snifter of flaming alcohol at arm’s length. 

“He _didn’t_ have a lighter!” Devon blurted out, “What the _hell_ ”-

“Shh.”

Stan put a finger to his lips.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“O-or _matches!_ ”

“I know. _Relax._ ”

“There’s people setting things on fire w-with, _what?_ Their minds? And you _expect_ me to”-

“ _Shh._ I said _don’t worry,_ okay?”

“I am _WORRYING_ and I’m _NOT_ ”-

Stan threw his arm around his shoulder and hastily eased him away in the direction of the lounge. People had turned to look at the sound of his raised voice. A murmuring rose up from the crowd as they passed through.

“Johnny-boy,” he said, after he’d half-shoved him down onto a velvet couch, “This is _Rapture_. And in _Rapture_ , things are...different. You’re gonna _see things_ here. Things you won’t be seeing anywhere else. Things your brain’s gonna reject on principle. It’s better to take it in a little at a time, you dig?”

He flopped down on the couch beside him. Devon eyed him warily.

“Think about it too hard, too fast, without a full tank of gas and you’ll go cuckoo. Believe me. So! Tonight, we’re going to kick back and just... _relax._ Shove the worry ‘til after a good night’s rest. What’re you down for? Barbies? Benzos? Hmm...Blow’s probably a bad idea.”

“ _What_ ” Devon said softly, a fresh worry _somehow_ beginning to overtake the previous one, “are you _talking_ about?”

Stan waved over a waiter with a silver tray. It was loaded with little paper cups of pills in various colors. There was a matching silver goblet of hypodermic needles in the middle of it, like some kind of absurd plant garnish. 

Stan handed him a cup and had the waiter bring them more champagne. 

“No gods or kings in Rapture, baby!” he said with a smile, raising his paper cup in a toast, “And _no_ laws to stop us from _enjoying_ the good life!”

Devon looked at the white tablet in the cup. No. He didn’t _like_ this. He’d never liked substances that made him feel like something else was in control. He could only stand being drunk with people he’d known for years. Hell, he’d taken a drag off a cigarette when he was fourteen, thought it was foul, handed it back to the classmate who’d given it to him and never tried it again. 

But…

“C’mon, Johnny-boy!” Stan said, wiggling his cup, “You only live _once._ And I’ll bet you can’t think of any other club on the surface where you can get _these_ , can you now?”

With a nervous smile, Devon returned the toast. Stan washed his down with all the champagne in his flute in one gulp and flopped back against the couch with a contented sigh. Devon swallowed his obligatory sip and took the moment Stan closed his eyes to spit out the pill down his jacket sleeve. 

Plan C it was.

-

It was a terrible idea. He _felt_ terrible, pretending to be buzzed himself and egging Stan on to take more and more pills, to drink more and more alcohol, while he spat out his share and poured his drinks out into an old highball glass that someone had left sitting under the table. At one point they had lined up a row of shots and Stan had drunk every single one of them, too far gone by then to even notice that Devon wasn’t reciprocating. He had no idea how the man was still alive. At more than one point, he thought he’d inadvertently killed him.

Well, he was getting his punishment now.

It had taken twenty full minutes to get Stan’s home address out of him and another twenty minutes to drag him down to the bathysphere depot. When he’d been trying to make sense of the map, he had, of course, wandered off again. Devon had found him on the other end of the atrium, facedown in a pile of fast food detritus. When he had finally hauled him into the bathysphere, propped him up on the seat (he slid down like he was made of jelly) and closed the door behind them, it was with no small sense of victory. 

The neighborhood he’d finally made it to didn’t seem to be in the best part of town. The sidewalks were dirty, the buildings looked much cheaper than what he’d seen so far, a good amount of the streetlights were broken and at one point, with some alarm, he’d felt a drop of water land on his head. 

Getting Stan into the elevator was about as fun as the bathysphere had been, with the added bonus of an entire panel of buttons for him to lean on, pressing half of them at once and sending them on a marvelous adventure before reaching what he hoped against all hope was the right floor. 

The satisfaction of turning the key in the lock was beyond what he’d previously thought possible for such a mundane action.

He had dumped Stan sideways in his rumpled bed, said his goodbyes and backed out before he could groan anything in return. 

It was quiet now, the silence of the small apartment as heavy as that which had gathered behind the closed door of his hotel room. He felt alone in the world. 

The inside of the apartment was as shabby as the outside had been. The wallpaper was peeling, concerning patches of damp being revealed behind it. The sink was piled with dirty dishes, the flooring looked like it had been scraped repeatedly with a wire bush and every piece of furniture had clearly seen better days. And yet…

Here and there were little touches of out of place luxury. A solid marble pen holder with a gilded pen. A typewriter so new it gleamed. An intricate art deco mirror on a wall that was falling to pieces. 

He reminded himself that he was here for a reason and set to work. At least there weren’t a whole lot of places it could be hidden, if it was indeed here.

-

“You’re… _seeing that,_ aren’t you?” Ken asked, more than just the chill night wind raising goosebumps on his flesh, “It’s more than me, right?”

Tryggvisson lowered his binoculars.

“Unless we are having a group hallucination…”

Einar said nothing, but Ken saw his grip tighten on the railing. 

The lighthouse kept on glowing in the distance. 

All of a sudden, Svalbard burst out of the bridge, his eyes wide with panic, his voice frantic. Einar and Tryggvisson spoke back to him, all of their words blending into a stream of nonsense in Ken’s ears but their tones unmistakably frightened.

“Goddammit!” he finally blurted out, his blood pressure rising, “ _What is it?_ ”

Tryggvisson turned to him like he’d been snapped out of a dream.

“Something is coming.” he said, his voice flat, a distant look on his face, “And the motor will not start.” 

Fifty thoughts converged in his head all at once, so much that they _hurt_ , that they crashed into each other and made for a roiling storm inside his head. 

_June and Kiki will never see you again I’m sorry I’m so sorry_ oh my god _I’m sorry_ they’re going to kill you _a goddamn torpedo_ I know what a goddamn torpedo is _where the FUCK ARE YOU DEVON I shouldn’t have come but I’m here aren’t I? And if I’m here there has to be something I can do for someone_ it has to MEAN something _it can’t be for NOTHING and that means-_

With a cry, he shoved past Einar and Svalbard and sprinted belowdecks. He could hear them calling after him, but making out the words was beyond him. The thing he was looking for was snatched up in under thirty seconds. Without even pausing, he grabbed the last six pack of beer out of the cooler on the way back up. 

When he was back on deck, he hucked the entire pack in the bag to weigh it down ( _always packed light, didn’t you, Devon?_ ), tied it closed and was about to wind up to wing the thing as far out as he could possibly throw it when Einar clung to his arm and wouldn’t let go.

“Nei! Nei, _please!_ ” he begged, trying to tear the bag out of his hand, tears running down his face, “He is coming back! You have to leave it for him, he _needs_ ”-

“ _Einar!_ ” Ken shouted, wrenching it free with a roughness that he immediately regretted.

He looked down at the sea bag in his hands, _DEVON KEIGHLEY_ stamped on its side in faded white letters. 

“Einar…” he said more gently, his bottom lip quivering, the words hard to put together in his mouth, “Whoever’s coming - they _can’t_ be knowing he was _here_. We hold onto this bag and...and after we’re done for, _they’ll_ be looking for the missing Mr. Fifth Person. If he’s still out there...we...we need to give him a _chance._ The only chance he’s _got._ G...Get it?”

Einar bowed his head and seemed to shrink into himself. He didn’t interfere as Ken spun the bag over his head and let it fly. For half a second, they stood there, watching the dark lump vanish below the moonlight-speckled surface of the ocean.

Tryggvisson cried out from the other side and the spell was broken. Einar and Ken rushed to join him. He didn’t have to point out the thing he was screaming at. There was an unnatural looking bulge beneath the water, speeding towards them.

“THE FILM!” Ken cried, smacking himself in the face, “Where is it, the bridge? _Tryggvisson!_ ”

“ _Ja!_ ” Tryggvisson snapped, unable to look away, “The bridge.”

Ken pulled his lighter out of his pocket and flicked it on.

Tryggvisson spun around at the sound of the click, aghast. 

“No. NO.” he cried, stomping towards him, “Do not you _DARE_. That film - it is the _only_ evidence we have that”-

Something rocked the ship from below and sent them all stumbling.

“Einar!” Ken cried, seizing Einar by the wrist before he hit the deck and hauling him back to his feet.

He pressed the lighter into his calloused palm.

“Go.” he said, pointing at the bridge door, right behind them, “Burn it. They see underwater pictures, they add two and two to make a sub with a camera. I…”

With a sad smile, he opened his coat and shifted the gun from an inner, to an outer pocket.

“I’ll buy you time.”

Einar’s eyes widened and shock drained the last remaining bit of color from his features. He nodded stiffly and made a run for it. 

Something _crunched_ from below and the ship was abruptly level again. Tryggvisson had abruptly given up on stopping the film’s destruction and run back to the railing to peer down the side of the ship. Svalbard was nowhere to be seen. 

Ken waited, his arms crossed, his feet planted firmly on the deck. He had made up his mind to look braver than he felt.

A sub so black that it nearly vanished into the dark waves rose beside them. The still-dripping hatch was thrown open and a horde of black-coated men clambered out. Their small arms gleamed in the moonlight as they took them from their holsters. Tryggvisson backed up as quickly as he’d run over there.

“Sorry!” one of them, the last to emerge, yelled, “Slight miscalculation, there.”

Before he could stop himself, Ken called back “You wanna exchange insurance information, then?”

Tryggvisson was looking at him as though he’d snapped. Maybe he had. But then again, reasonable conversations have less currency with which to purchase time. 

There were a few snickers from within the group. 

“ _Aight,_ smart guy.” another one answered, “What are you _doing_ , all by your lonesome, _allllll_ the way out _here?_ ”

“Oh, you know.” Ken said, uncrossing his arms to shrug nonchalantly, “Fishing with the boys. Beautiful night for it. Look at that _moon!_ Need to see our fishing license, officer?”

“What the - _no!_ _Look_ , bub. I’m only gonna ask you _one_ more time. What. The fuck. Are you doing. _Out here._ ”

Tryggvisson looked like he was going to explode. If his ears were suns, they’d both be going supernova. Any minute now and he was going to-

“These are _international_ waters under maritime _law!_ ” he bellowed, clenching his fists and taking a step forward, “By whose authority do _you_ think you have the right to police them?”

“Oho!” the one he’d been arguing with (the leader?) said, with a laugh, “Bossy one, aren’t you?”

“ _Maritime law!_ ” another squealed, clutching his sides, “Woooo, haven’t heard _that_ one in a while.”

“By whose _authoriteeeeeehehehehe!_ ”

More laughter from across the waves. Tryggvisson grimaced. For half a second, Ken actually did feel bad for him.

“Al _right._ ” Ken said, taking one step closer, his hands in the air to show that he meant no harm, “How d’you feel about making a _deal?_ How about...I quit goofing and give you your answer and then _you_ quit goofing and answer _my_ question. Repeat as necessary. Sound fair?”

“Life’s not fair, bub. Sorry to break it to you.”

Ken rolled his eyes.

“Hell if I don’t already know that.”

Someone chortled. Ken caught the scent of something acrid on the breeze. The film! It was burning. He felt a surge of happiness and relief. It wouldn’t be for nothing. Even if all of them died right here, it wouldn’t be for nothing. 

Ken smiled wide at them. Slowly, he dropped his arms to his sides. 

“Alright, fellas. If you’re not going to be the gentlemen here, I guess I’ll have to be, right?”

He could take out one of them by surprise. The supposed leader would be the most gratifying target. The rest...well, he’d have to be satisfied with dragging down who he could with him. 

“ _I’ll_ start it off.” he said, “A simple question. Easy to answer. Even _you_ should be able to get it.”

There wasn’t a peep among them. He could feel all of their eyes on him. Good. Better him than the smoke that was probably seeping out under the bridge door. 

“What…” he asked, the smile leaving his face, to be replaced with a stony glare, “the _hell_ kind of pit spawned you bunch of mother-loving mugs?”

“Ha.” the leader laughed coldly, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Ken sighed and shook his head. Not that he’d actually been expecting anything but...some part of him had wanted to know the identity of his enemy, before he died. To solve the mystery, to add some weight to the purpose of his death, to get _some_ form of closure at the end of the story. He guessed that there were just some things that he was never meant to know. That maybe nobody ever made it to the end fully satisfied.

“Well, _I would_ very much so!” Tryggvisson yelled back, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Gee,” the leader said, raising his hand up in the air, the moonlight glinting off the silver chain dangling from his sleeve, “That’s just too bad, isn’t it?”

“It does not _have_ to be if you would”-

He brought his hand down in a swift, chopping motion.

It all happened in an instant.

There was a rush of air, a scarlet flash, a shot.

Tryggvisson was dead, crumpling to the deck, the mortal wound a shot to the back of the head from the hand of a man who had not been there a moment before. 

Ken goggled in disbelief, his hand fumbling for the gun, firing shot after shot into the laughing scarlet cloud. Cheers resounded from the direction of the sub. In horror, he realized that they _weren’t_ fighting him - they were _playing_ with him.

The cloud was behind him. He felt its breath on the back of his neck.

_FUCK._

It was right in front of his eyes.

_GODDAMMIT no-no-no-_

It shot a bullet that grazed his cheek.

_One, just let me have ONE, that’s all I-_

It was about to execute him point-blank when-

Svalbard, screaming, barreled into it with a harpoon. The two of them went tumbling together across the deck, limbs tangled together, screams mingling as one and blending with the horrified cries from the sub. Ken hit the deck, as a wave of bullets soared overhead, just barely missing him.

His ears were ringing, but someone was calling his name. He scrambled toward the sound, shots pinging the deck around him, one of them a hot poker through his lower leg, another bludgeoning him square in the shoulder. 

He was almost there. He could see him - Einar, urging him on from the bridge, lunging out the last few feet and grabbing him by the arm. Struggling to pull Ken’s mass with his frail frame, but not letting go until they were inside and the heavy steel door was locked behind them.

“ _Einar!_ ” he cried with a gasp. 

He tried to pull himself up to sitting position with one working arm, noticed that his one working hand was still holding the gun and hurriedly stuffed it in his bullet hole riddled pocket before finally succeeding. 

“Einar, you didn’t _see_ that did y”-

Einar was kneeling beside him, his hands cupped over a spot on his chest. He coughed and a reddish foam sprayed out from between his lips. 

The first aid kit. There had to be one - there, in a wall bracket. He heaved himself to his feet with a scream and fell back down after having torn it off the wall. 

It was full of bandages, gauze, antiseptic, a Hot-R-Cold-Pak that looked like it had seen better days. No, no, no, what do you _do_ for a busted lung?

Einar coughed again and slowly sank to the ground. 

Ken cried as he pressed his good hand against the hole in his chest to stop what he knew he could not.

The bullets kept on pinging against the walls.

-

Every single time the warped floor creaked under his feet, Devon’s blood pressure shot up another notch. Any second now, Stan was going to hear him and come wandering out that bedroom door. Or some neighbor below was going to start wondering who was moving around so much at this hour. Every creak that wasn’t him sounded like a footstep and every drip from the faucet was a herald of doom.

The desk had yielded nothing. He’d found no secret panels in the walls, even when he’d peered behind the ostentatious mirror. That left the bathroom, kitchen cupboards and closet left to search. Of course, it _could_ very well be in the bedroom, but he was trying not to think about that until there were no other possibilities.

He decided on the closet next. The sliding door squealed on its rail when he pulled it open. He froze and waited for the other shoe to fall.

Nothing happened. The faucet kept on dripping.

The closet was as messy as the rest of the apartment had been. Hats were thrown haphazardly on the top shelf, with what he assumed was their boxes stacked behind them. The floor was littered with mismatched shoes, some of them oddly luxurious but treated no differently than the most scuffed up among them. Hanging on the rack, alongside the occasional coffee-stained suit, were a great deal of brightly colored Hawaiian shirts that got progressively worse in taste as he went. 

He shoved his hand through them and felt about on the back wall. His hand bumped something metal. Hardly daring to breathe, he wrestled his way through the clothes and pulled out the flashlight that he’d found in the desk drawer. 

It was a poorly installed metal panel, set in crumbling plaster and surrounded by tangled wires snaking through holes in the wall. Wary as he was of getting shocked by the setup, when he knocked on the panel, it sprang open. 

And there it was. He almost cried in relief. 

He put the headset on his head with shaking hands and turned the dial to the frequency the Icelandic Coast Guard used for communication. 

Static.

And then…

“ _Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E Hey! there, Hi! there, Ho! there...You're as welcome as can be…_ ”

For a frantic second, he realized that the microphone was detached and searched wildly for it, before realizing that it was under a thick coat of dust, on top of the radio itself. 

“ _Ken?_ ” he whispered hoarsely into the microphone, the second after he’d plugged it in, “Is that you?”

Silence that dragged on for much longer than the time that actually passed.

“ _Oh...oh my God…_ ”

He sounded like he was crying. There was some kind of interference in the background. Some kind of rhythmic thumping.

“ _Yeah...yeah, it’s me. Are you...safe?_ ”

A relative question. In immediate peril? No. But _safe?_ Not at _all._

The _wrongness_ of the situation prickled along every nerve of his body. What was it that Ken most _needed_ to hear?

“Yeah.” he said softly, “I’m safe. Are...you?”

A silence that lasted forever again.

“ _Just...listen to me, okay? I don’t...I don’t have time and it’s so...so hard to...ugh. Goddammit! Tryggvisson is dead. I didn’t see what happened with Svalbard but there’s no way he...and Einar...I’m...I’m so sorry, I tried but…_ ”

Devon leaned against the wall, the strength in his legs slowly failing.

“ _They shot him. Mugs in black coats with the chains on their sleeves._ They _did this. They’ve got the Worm Boat hooked up to...something...and they towed us...somewhere. Fuck if I know. I’m holed up in the bridge with...well, I’m alone now. And...they’re coming in._ ”

Devon breathed a shuddering breath and sank down to the floor, the cord attached to the headset growing taut.

“I don’t...I don’t have any more time. I’m sorry. For everything. Could you...could you tell her...her daddy didn’t go down without a fight? I-I...I have to”-

Static.

“Ken?” he cried into the microphone, his voice breaking, “Ken, _answer me!_ _Ken!_ ”

Nothing. The microphone dropped out of his trembling hand. He was scrambling to pick it back up when-

Beneath the row of awful shirts, a pair of unsteady feet shambled out across the floor. He turned off the flashlight and slapped a hand over his mouth and nose. He was feeling light headed. He was breathing too loud. Living too loud. Feeling too loud.

 _Pretend it didn’t happen,_ a voice in his head said, _Do you want to live to see justice done? Pretend that you heard nothing, that you know nothing, that nothing is wrong. Believe it for as long as you need to...and then strike._

He let out a shaky breath.

Slowly, he lifted the headset off his head. The feet stumbled over to an easy chair and fell into it with a groan. He stood up and feeling as though he were moving in slow motion, put everything back the way he had found it. 

“Stan!” he said, after he’d slipped out of the closet, “You doing alright, man? You were so out of it, I didn’t feel right leaving you by yourself…”

-

This headache just wasn’t quitting. Sullivan massaged his forehead and downed a few more aspirin before making the call. There was a flask of whiskey in his desk drawer that he desperately wanted to chug as though it were water, but in all likelihood, that wouldn’t do anything to improve the headache. Or his faculties. Lord knows he needed to hold onto _those_ for a little longer.

Ordinarily, Mr. Ryan would have had his hide for contacting him this late at night but, well, nobody was exactly _sleeping_ tonight, were they?

The phone rang once.

“Yes?” Ryan answered, not even pausing to ask who it was, “Do you have an update?”

Sullivan took a deep breath.

“That idiot shot Jonah and then himself when we busted down the door.”

Ryan grunted dispassionately. 

“So you have nothing.”

Sullivan counted to three.

“No sir, not _quite_ nothing. We got his wallet. He was an American. Had an Illinois driver's license. Business card says he was in insurance. There was a...a lot of family pictures in it.”

Its contents were still spread out across his desk. There was a picture of a dark haired girl staring up at him accusingly from among them. Feeling slightly ridiculous, he nudged it under a business card.

“ _Insurance,_ Sullivan?” Ryan squawked, a hysterical edge to his voice, “ _You_ aim to tell _me_ that _you_ lost...what is it now? _Two_ men...to a _bumpkin insurance salesman?_ How… _how_ is this possible? When I hired you, I thought I was getting a man of _caliber._ Of”-

Sullivan narrowed his eyes.

“That was all he had, sir.”

For a moment, Ryan was quiet.

“Hmph. Well.” he finally answered, “I suppose no one _does_ expect Captain Ahab to come charging out with his harpoon, do they? Did the boys find anything… _intact_ , on him?”

“Some identification. He was an Icelander. Another civilian. The boat was registered to him. Likely a local fisherman.”

“Hmm. And the others?”

“Maybank said the mouthy one _sounded_ like he might’ve been some kind of coast guard, but we found nothin’ on him. The old man had a driver’s license and not much else. Another Icelander. That’s all we know.”

“There was no...documentation as to why they might have been there? Nothing to...shall we say, _connect_ events?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. We tore it apart top to bottom. Didn’t find much more than fishing gear and overnight bags in there. Checked for hollow spots in the hull too.”

“Drat.”

“Hah. I’m with you there, sir. But...there was _one_ odd thing we found.”

“Oh?”

“Some kind of _blob_ of molten plastic stuck to the bridge floor. It’s hard to make out but...it looks like it was some kind of _film._ ”

A long silence. 

“I do not enjoy the implications of that, Sullivan.”

“Me neither, sir.”

It really was amazing that he’d gotten through this conversation without putting the phone down once. Maybe it _was_ more productive to call him this late, when he had no more time than anyone else to waste.

Ryan sighed.

“I need you to keep as close an eye as you are able on _him._ Find a charge. Any charge will do. He’s going to slip up and when he _does…_ ”

“I understand, sir.”

“Good. Ah, and before I forget…”

“Yessir?”

“If...who was it? Jonah? If Jonah and...that other gentleman had any family, have my secretary work with you to send them each a fruit basket, on my tab. Appearances _do_ matter, after all. And, the papers are to be told the usual lie.”

“Very good, s”-

The line was already dead before he could finish.

Great Men needed their rest more than they needed their manners, he supposed.

-

“Here we are!” Stan said cheerily as he nudged open the door to his office with his foot, his arms laden with takeout, “Lemon pepper fish, walnut shrimp and they were out of pork eggrolls when I got there, so they gave us veggie on the house instead, which I don’t care for, but hey, free food. Not...uh...not that it was real pork to begin with, but _still._ ”

“Oh thank goodness.” his interviewee said, digging into the bag the second he set it down on his desk, “I was about to start eating shoe leather.”

At some point last night he’d told him his name. He remembered the event happening. He saw the way his lips had moved in his mind’s eye but… _everything_ from the previous night had been a blur. 

Dijon? Like the mustard? Had that been it? Did it make _any_ kind of sense to name a kid after a mustard? 

He’d have to find some crafty way to get it without letting on that he’d completely forgotten it. Some newshound he was. He was getting too complacent. He was losing his touch.

Stan chuckled.

“I’ll bet. They feeding you down at that hotel?”

“Well… _technically_ they’ve got a complimentary breakfast but...it’s a plate of muffins. One plate, on a table, with a room temp pitcher of orange juice and a carafe of coffee that leaks when you try to pour it. It...wasn’t the most _satiating_ thing, if you catch my drift.”

“Yeesh. Well, everyone’s gotta start somewhere, right?” Stan said, cringing as he thought about the orange juice. No, Ryan definitely wasn’t playing favorites here. 

“Before they pull themselves up by the bootstraps!” he finished, pumping his fist encouragingly into the air, “Local pastime, that. Bootstrapping.”

“Ah.”

The mustard man seemed less than impressed. Or maybe he was just tired. Or as hungover as he was. Or homesick. It was one thing, coming down here knowing a little something-something about what you’re getting into, but quite another to wander in without so much as a prior howdy-do. 

His office chair dropped down to its minimum height when he sat in it, momentarily making him look like a child sitting at a big boy’s desk. With a grumble, he fixed it and reached for the takeout bag.

He really did need a new one. Could afford it now, too. But would a wingback chair decked out in smuggled cow leather and brass tacks be too much? Probably. He was having a time and a half, refraining from showing off his newfound wealth _too much_. It was _awful_ , being incognito and unable to rub it in other people’s noses without fear of blowing his cover.

“Hey...” his guest was saying, still looking downcast even with a shrimp clutched between his chopsticks, “I’m really sorry I’m so...broke. I’ll pay you back when I can.” 

A nervous smile, as charming as the one he’d flashed for the newsreels yesterday.

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right?”

“Oh, no, no.” Stan said, waving his concerns away, “Don’t worry about it. After last night…”

He made a face.

“Consider yourself paid up. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t stuck around. Not...uh...not my finest hour there.”

The guest nodded good-naturedly and popped the shrimp into his mouth. What a stand-up guy. He hadn’t even cracked a single joke about him not holding his liquor. It was more than any of his coworkers had done, natch. Despite the pounding in his head, he had a pretty good idea of how to conduct the interview now.

“And...about the interview...I was thinking, maybe we make it a _series_. Have ‘em coming back for more from week to week. A different topic, every week. And...to even out our debts...keep it _exclusive._ At least for the next couple of months. That’ll pull one over the Standard for sure.”

The guest swallowed.

“Ah.” he said, “So that’s your real motive.”

Stan made a clicking sound with his tongue and winked.

“ _Bingo!_ ”

The guest smiled at him, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He really did look exhausted - like he’d aged several years overnight. It was nothing a good night’s sleep, a square meal and if he so desired, a little ADAM couldn’t fix, though. Rapture was awash in easy fixes. If he made use of his spotlight and played his cards right, he didn’t think he’d have any trouble fitting in. 

But mostly, he was just pleased that he’d moved fast enough to snatch up another cash cow, despite that goddamn art show he’d been stuck at when the news was fresh. He foresaw a spike in sales for the Rapture Tribune. Maybe they’d even make him an editor. Not that it mattered so much now, what with his other line of work being so much more lucrative, but...there was a part of him that still held to the dream of the fourteen year old boy who was scribbling out local interest articles in Nowheresville, Ohio with the hopes of becoming something better.

As they ate, he got so wrapped up in his daydream, that he didn’t notice how, on the opposite side of the desk, his guest’s chopsticks were shaking ever so slightly in his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- A Clue: Every single time I have to include some sort of number in a story, I make that number some kind of easter egg. And then, when enough time goes by, I completely forget what the easter egg was but know that it’s in there.
> 
> \- Behind the Scenes: I really liked the idea of Lamb’s backstory happening concurrently to Delta’s (logically, that _would_ have to be the case, right?) - of seeing glimpses of her, here and there, of vaguely knowing what’s happening on her side of things even if the character whose eyes we’re looking through is completely unaware of their significance….until way too late.
> 
> \- Special Monday bonus update coming up!


	5. Interlude - Newspaper Articles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A selection of newspaper clippings from the mysterious steamer trunk that washed ashore on the New England Coast in the early 1980s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- CW: none.

MYSTERIOUS CRAFT SIGHTED OFF POINT PROMETHEUS

_By Johanna Whinston_

Museum goers and staff were given quite a shock at 11:03 this morning when three Ryan Security bathyspheres were seen escorting a fourth of unknown make just outside the deep sea ecology exhibit. Witnesses report that it was made of “some dull, greyish metal,” was “smaller than a compact model” and that it appeared to have been chained to the bathy in the lead. It was reported to have been heading in the direction of Olympus Heights.

Ryan Security has declined to comment at this time.

-

SECURITY CONCERNS RAISED AMIDST HULLABALOO: RYAN AT FAULT

_By Evan Keating_

At 10:45 AM, Monday morning, officers of Ryan Security reportedly took an unauthorized submersible and its pilot into custody just beyond city limits. After thorough questioning, the man popularly dubbed “Johnny Topside” [real name currently unknown], was released into the city with the blessing of the City Council. It is the only recorded instance in Rapture’s decade long history of an outsider breaking our much-valued secrecy, accident or no.

This particular security breach may have proven to be benign and its perpetrator, a fascinating addition to the city, but what of the next one? Have our Council become so complacent in our assumed safety that _hobbyists_ may now find our free-market haven with the greatest of ease? If that is the case, it is almost certain that surface world governments will have an even simpler time reaching our doorstep.

We must update our long-stagnating security measures, which have seen little in the way of upgrades since the city’s inception, if we are to maintain our freedom and way of life that we have painstakingly built for ourselves, link by golden link.

Of particular concern in the incident is Ryan Security. While the breach was by all accounts well handled, the fact that it was allowed to happen at all is deeply troubling. A former employee who wishes to remain anonymous reports “cheap equipment, less than thorough training and unstable plasmids” being given to new recruits and veterans on a regular basis. 

Many businesses run by Ryan Industries are somewhat famously known for being cheapskates behind the scenes. A penny saved is a penny earned, after all and one does not rise to the top of the Great Chain without sacrifice. 

But is it really wise to trust the matter of our safety and freedom to less-than-trained recruits with cheap equipment and unstable plasmids? I don’t think so. The stakes are too high and the consequences, too dire.

Andrew Ryan needs to be held accountable for his failure to maintain Rapture’s secrecy.

-

Exclusive Interview - the ‘Man Who Discovered Atlantis’, Part II

_Interviewed by Stanley Poole_

You’ve seen the newsreel footage! Heard the rumors! Now hear the _truth_ , straight from the horse’s mouth and _only_ right here in the Rapture Tribune! 

What is the _real_ story behind the adventurer we call...Johnny Topside?

Last week’s topic: The harrowing heroics behind the alarming adventure! 

This week’s: But what of the life that came before?

**Heya, welcome back, folks! And a hearty welcome to our _very special_ guest.**

Glad to be back!

**Glad to hear it! How’ve you been settling in since last time?**

Very well, thank you! I’m getting close to getting my own place and _maybe_ finding some work to pick up.

**How exciting! You’ll definitely keep us posted on that, right?**

Oh, but _of course_.

**Now, in the past, you mentioned that your father and yourself built the bathysphere that brought you down to our neck of the woods, right? What kind of father-son duo gets together to _do_ something like that?**

It’s not a - you know what? Yes. Yes, we did. 

My...father and...I - we ran this little machine shop up in Reykjavik. Nothing fancy. It was mostly boat repairs for the local fishermen. Sometimes cars, if a neighbor was in particularly dire straits. 

I was born and raised on the docks of sunny Daygo. Spent a good part of my childhood at dad’s feet, learning the trade. Then I got drafted and was sent off to Iceland during the war. Lucky break, huh? Not too much of a war happening up there.

So I end up falling in love with the place. There was so much to see there, to explore. What’re you _doing_ with your life if you’re not exploring, right?

**Well, I personally am enjoying a good cigar.**

Good for you. I...don’t suppose you can open a window without letting the ocean in, can you?

Anyway...I come home and convince Pa to set up shop with me over there. We’d lost my brother in the war and both of us needed a distraction.

**My condolences! You a big brother or a little one?**

A...twin. My brother’s name was Peter. Thank you...for that. 

So...submersibles were our passion project. We tinkered away at them in between jobs. We wanted to _explore_ \- to go deeper than anyone who’d come before us, to see things that no person had ever before laid eyes on.

**Wowzers! You sure got that in spades.**

Did I _ever_! You just don’t expect to run headfirst into a city in the North Atlantic.

**That is kind of the point.**

Too many people and it turns into Disneyland, right?

**Huh. You Topsiders and your Topside talk.**

_What!_ You missed _Disneyland_ too! Oh, I’d never thought of _that_!

**Anyway-**

I am a bit old for...a _lot_ old, actually...for it, but I’ve got - had - this friend with a kid who _adored_ it, when they went. Uh, sorry for the tangent. Next question?

**Speaking of family, word through the grapevine says that you’ve got a special someone. Do tell!**

Ah...yes. My biggest regret in coming here. We were supposed to be married next June...for her name, see. June. 

**Awww! How...cheesy.**

Oh, very. She loves cheese. Metaphorical _and_ literal. Puts up with my escapades, doesn’t she? She was a nurse, during the war. That was how we met.

I was planning on moving back to the states and buying us a house with a white picket fence. Finally settling down and starting a family. But, well...plans change.

**They sure do. How’re you coping?**

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I totally understand _why_ I can’t ever see her again. Secrecy and all. Disneylandification. But...I just wish I could’ve said goodbye. 

**Yeah. Say, did you have any names picked out for the kids?**

Uh...we thought...Kenneth would be nice for a boy and, for a girl-

_Story continued on page 10_

-

**  
_Letter to the Editor: Let Mrs. Topside Come to Rapture_  
**

I devoured the most recent Johnny Topside interview and I - as I’m sure holds the same for the many avid readers of the Rapture Tribune - was greatly saddened by Mr. Topside’s unplanned separation from the until-then future Mrs. Topside (though more than a few of us are joshing to take her place). It’s a terrible tragedy and one seemingly without a solution, given the ironclad restrictions on surface contact. 

So, I’m here to propose a different solution: let Mrs. Topside come to Rapture. That way, the surface remains free of those who might spill the beans and the lovers need not be separated any longer! Not to mention that we the people get to witness the wedding of the decade (I imagine there’d be a lot of designers jimmying to design that dress!).

Inviting her down without revealing the truth of Rapture is a bigger issue of course - perhaps she might be contacted through code or in cryptic terms that describe what the city is _like_ , but not what it _is_? It’s tricky business, to be sure, but I and many others (though it pains us somewhat) would very much like to see this star-crossed love story end happily. 

\- Angelina S.

-

City Icon, Fashion Disaster

_By Claire Dunnett_

Rapture’s favorite adventurer was seen leaving the Rapture Tribune offices this afternoon sporting an eclectic ensemble of a loudly patterned aloha shirt, plaid trousers and an olive green trenchcoat. Insiders report that he was wearing a different shirt when he entered the building and was also carrying a full cup of coffee. 

It’s another fashion disaster from Rapture’s newest resident! On anyone else, mixing straight-edged plaid with polynesian luridity would be among the direst crimes of high fashion, but on Mr. Topside, it’s just more reason to love him. As our long time readers are well aware, this is not the first fashion disaster Mr. Topside has been swept up in and judging from the recurring evidence, will likely not be the last. 

While we cannot in good conscience recommend emulation of Mr. Topside’s unique style, we can indeed continue to cheer him on from the sidelines of good taste for consistently providing quality entertainment.

-

HEARTTHROB IN THE HEART OF RAPTURE

_By Rekha Kanungo_

Good news, ladies! The next time your hair dryer’s on the fritz, you could be seeing a familiar face at your door.

Insiders report that none other than _Johnny Topside_ is working at the Hephaestus power facility - reportedly as an on-call maintenance man. Several witnesses claim to have seen him out and about, tool case in hand, face roguishly smudged with grease. 

Councilman Kyburz neither confirmed nor denied the rumors when we reached out to him, but he did ask that maintenance calls be limited to “serious inquiries only.”

So turn up the heat and blow out your climate-control systems! There’s no saying which maintenance man you’ll get, but with a lucky roll of the dice you could very well have the harrowing heartthrob himself in your home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Behind the Scenes: There are two versions of every instance in which Devon speaks to the media - the one in which he answers as his awkward, self-conscious self and the one in which his more confident public persona does the talking. For some reason I can’t seem to write one without writing the other first. I am a fairly awkward person myself, after all. Or maybe I just needed to see how things could go wrong before I could figure out how to make them go right.


	6. Behind the Curtain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone Devon ever cared for is dead and the city is nothing but a beautiful cage. But there’s always the fires of revenge to keep a person going! Are you ready for a _heist_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- CW: gun violence, physical abuse, implied rape and drug use.

**Rapture, 1957**

That annoying bell tone rang out over the loudspeaker. Devon glanced up from the pamphlet he was halfheartedly skimming to check the train’s arrival time. The train itself had loudspeakers too and endless ads that blared in the confines of the cars, but if he was in motion, it _felt_ like he was doing something to escape them. At the very least, he knew he was getting closer to a place where they wouldn’t be sounding off 24/7.

Not for five more minutes.

" _Did you hear, Jim?_ ” the insipid PA actress said in her insipid, echoing, inescapable voice, “ _All the talk about ships from the surface sinking near Rapture — do you think there's something to it?_ "

His breath caught in his throat.

" _Oh Mary, when will you learn?_ ” the equally insipid actor chided, “ _Except for those arriving by invitation there hasn't been a ship sighted around Rapture in years! That's why we built it here!_ "

Rage. Steaming, bubbling, boiling...he felt like tearing something in half with his bare hands.

" _Gosh, is my face ever red. I guess that's what I get for listening to fish stories._ "

Mechanical laughter reverberating through the station.

He squeezed his eyes shut. 

_Nothing is wrong, remember?_ that voice whispered in his ear, _Nothing happened. Nobody died. It’s another normal day in a normal city. Believe it, please. For just a little while longer. Just long enough to make it through._

The muscles in his neck and shoulders slowly unclenched. His expression went back to its typical blank stare. 

The crowd filing in to wait for the train flowed around him, uncaring, unnoticing. Half of them probably hadn’t even registered that an announcement had been played at all. He felt a sudden pang of loneliness that almost felt like a physical sensation, like a knitting needle poking at his heart or…

Like sitting in the dark at the bottom of a bay, cut off from anything and anyone, thinking only of hanging on for the next minute and the next and the next...

When he directed his attention back to the pamphlet, he realized that he’d been absentmindedly shredding it. The crude butterfly stamped on the cover had almost been torn in two. 

He couldn’t bring himself to consider it much of a loss. It had been shoved in his hands minutes before, by a member of the group who’d been marching outside the station for the past couple of days now. Despite having passed by them every morning, he still had no idea what they were marching for. Their signs all said things like “Rebirth!”, “Renewal!” and “In Unity We Are Stronger!” It was all just a little too vague for his tastes. That, and he only had so much energy to care about anything that didn’t have to do with the mission that consumed his every waking and sleeping thought.

The only reason he’d cracked open the pamphlet at all was because he’d run out of books that weren’t the memoirs of successful magnates or thinly veiled moralizing about the wonders of self-sufficiency. The greater majority of reading material down here really was _atrocious_. And of course, there was no such thing as a public library. 

Its brakes squealing, seawater still dripping down its windows, the train pulled into the station. 

He tossed the pamphlet in the trash and shoved his way on with the rest of the Pauper’s Drop nine to fivers.

-

The bathysphere to Hephaestus was packed with the usual coworkers. They made the usual small talk, exchanged the usual news. Devon smiled and nodded and offered the usual, rote answers.

He peered out the window as the water turned sulphurous and the dusky glow of the thermal energy vents illuminated the miles of pipe pumping energy to the rest of the city. During this leg of the journey, he always felt as though the temperature inside rose several degrees. But that was ridiculous, of course. He’d studied the temperature control system of these things for long enough to know that it was quite shielded from all extremes. 

They drifted into the bathysphere depot and floated to the top. When the door opened, they filed out, in orderly fashion, to their respective departments. 

Devon poked his head into Supervisor Kyburz’s office. It took a moment before he noticed. He didn’t look entirely awake, nor happy about the textbook-sized stack of paperwork he was going through. On the other side of it was a smaller stack, presumably the ones he’d gotten through so far.

“Oh!” he said, with a start, when he noticed him, “G’morning Keighley.”

Devon felt a surge of happiness.

“Mornin’, Kyburz.”

Kyburz was one of the few people who used his actual name. It felt so oddly _good_ to hear it outside the confines of his own head. When he said it, he felt like a little less of a ghost.

Not that he wasn’t grateful for the publicity Stan’s articles had netted him - they were a big part of the reason he’d been able to do what he’d been doing for so long without repercussions. But he did wish that the nickname hadn’t stuck so hard and fast. 

“Well...” Kyburz said, prying out a manila folder from the smaller stack of paperwork and handing it over, “Here’s the damage. There’s some kind of electrical problem down at Cohen’s. Says here the grid isn’t… _electrocuting_ enough people? I want to believe that’s a mistype, but...be careful with the artistic types, yeah? Temperamental as core three down here, they are. Ah, and there’s been some blackouts in Apollo Square. Probably just a faulty connection somewhere along the line. Bitch of a challenge to figure out where it is, though.”

“Eh” Devon said as he took the folder and flicked it open, “You know I’m up for a challenge.”

“Heh. That I do.”

Kyburz waved goodbye as he took his leave, his smile genuine despite the pressure Devon knew he was under.

He really did feel bad for stealing from him.

-

“Hey.” Navarro said, peeking around the open door of Devon’s locker, “Me and Norris are heading out to Fort Frolic after clock out. Want to come with?”

“Ah...not today.” Devon answered, peeling off his apron and hanging it up neatly, “I think I’ve dealt with enough artists for _ten_ days today.”

That part was definitely true, at least, this time.

Navarro looked disappointed.

“Well...see you ‘round then.”

It’d been a long time since he’d gotten out. It occurred to him that he probably should participate in social activities more often - to maintain appearances, if nothing else. To create the illusion, to an outside observer, that there was more going on in his life than one single-minded goal. 

A loner was not a safe thing to be down here. Bonds were what kept one alive, both in this world and the one above sea level. Cut them and all that’s left is a piece of flotsam, at the mercy of the current.

But there was something about Fort Frolic that made him feel hollow. Well, hollow- _er_ than his usual baseline of hollow-ness. The giddy socialites without a care in the world. The flashy shops with their neon signs and overpriced inebriants. The overpowering feeling that everything - _everything_ \- was for sale and that nothing was sacred. It was like how he’d felt in the train station that morning, multiplied. Every single time.

He stood there, listening to Navarro’s fading footsteps. When he could hear them no longer, he opened up the other lockers and started stuffing his pockets.

-

No one paid much attention to him in the Drop.

Or maybe it was more like: no one _expected_ to see him in the Drop and so, they never bothered to look. 

It had been so freeing, those first few months of living in an apartment that any decent person would be ashamed of. No one stopping him for autographs of a name that wasn’t his own. No photographers blinding him with a flash the second he stepped out the door. No more papers reporting on his every little movement and fashion choice. 

The attention given him had dropped dramatically elsewhere in the city too, once he’d made his exit from the public eye. Bit by bit, as he’d made himself as uninteresting as humanly possible, the papers had stopped writing about him and the amount of fans approaching him on the street had slowed to nearly (but not quite) nothing. 

Now, no one paid overmuch attention to him anywhere, really and he _knew_ that was something he should be concerned about, but his brief celebrity was not something he had enjoyed in the slightest.

Rapture was forgetting him, as it forgot all sensations who slipped off the front page.

But most especially those who sank into Pauper’s Drop. 

He stepped off the train, trying not to bump into any of the other exhausted-looking cogs in Rapture’s wheels who were departing for their dinners, homes and possibly drinks, alongside him. The marchers had left, their presence only remembered by the handful of dirty, trod-upon pamphlets they’d left behind. 

The wall they’d been protesting in front of was still covered with photographs of missing children and the messages of the families searching for them. More had definitely been added since he’d last taken a look. 

He frowned at the sheer amount of them overtaking all the other fliers that had once been posted there. The niggling thought that there were an awful lot of disappearances in the neighborhood, for the population density, wormed its way - not at all for the first time - into his mind. Almost all of them were girls. Some of the faces staring out reminded him of the photographs he’d seen of Kiki. Did they have drawings on a fridge that hope was slim they’d return to as well?

He turned away before he could get caught up in that particular rabbit hole of despair and carried on, homeward bound. Much as he wanted to care, he couldn’t let himself get caught up too much in these things.

He shuffled through dirty streets and water-stained tenements, his head down, his shoulders hunched, pausing only to look at the closed up bookshop longingly. The sign in the window promised that the owner would be back in ten minutes, but that ten minutes had stretched into weeks. Through the windows, he could see nothing but bare shelves, gathering dust.

It was the only shop he’d found in the city that had carried novels of any worth to him. Rapture wasn’t a place that was much given to flights of fancy. Almost all the children’s literature was in some way instructional. He had yet to find a single copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz on offer anywhere. Silly as it sounded, he was getting steadily closer to being willing to kill for either. 

The adult literature generally wasn’t a whole lot better either. There wasn’t much in the way of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells down here. Even the romance novels all read like moralizing plays in which the ‘parasitic’ third of the love triangle always got their comeuppance. But here…

Here, he’d found books that had taken him away from this world for a time. He felt more lost than he’d cared to admit without it.

His stomach grumbled, reminding him to keep moving.

The usual hucksters eyed him up as he trudged through the Skid Row marketplace but none of them made a move to hawk him watered down medicine, back alley food of questionable quality or clothes that would fall apart after a handful of washes. He’d demonstrated often enough that he was an impossible mark with an iron fisted grip on his wallet and no tolerance for attempts to pull the wool over his eyes. At some point they’d simply given up and let him be.

A little ways down the street, he came to the entrance of his basement level apartment. The steps down to the door were narrow, cracked and had a perpetual puddle at their foot that he was constantly stepping over to get in. The thin slits that passed for windows in the building were barred and any new paint applied to the surface peeled within weeks in the damp air. 

He hopped over the puddle with nary a splash, turned the key in the lock, and stepped inside. Before he did anything else, he re-locked the door behind him and drew both deadbolts. 

From one pocket he pulled out a coil of copper wire. It was pricey stuff and he tried not to take a whole lot of it, but dammit, the project in the sub-basement was one that _ate_ wire. The other pocket was weighed down by a spare C clamp. He could never have enough of those. And last but not at all least, was the half-full oxy-acetylene tank that he’d tied to his belt and walked out with under his trenchcoat. As far as he knew, no one had suspected. It fell to the floor with a dull _thunk_ when he undid the knot and he was immensely glad to have gotten rid of the constant feeling that it was about to pull his pants down. 

He was getting almost too good at smuggling out ridiculously large things with no one batting an eye. By this point, he thought, he could probably get a bandsaw out the front door with a reasonable chance of success. 

After showering, heating up a little canned soup for dinner (fake chicken noodle or, at least, he was pretty sure it was fake. they _did_ raise real chickens down here, but they were too expensive for what he’d paid), gagging on his daily shot of fish oil (in Iceland, at least, he could avoid having to take it in the sunnier months), he picked up his ill gotten gains and headed towards the sub-basement.

The apartment had once been part of a smuggling ring, before some kind of foodborne disease outbreak had revealed its presence to the authorities. He’d moved in on the slim hope offered by the stories whispered in the jazz club down the street and had been amazed to find out that it hadn’t just been a bunch of out of work curmudgeons blowing hot air. 

He’d had to dig through the wall of his bedroom to find the door, wincing all the way at the thought of what the landlord would say if he was wrong. 

But he hadn’t been wrong. The door was made of steel and festooned with hefty chains and locks. For good measure, it had also been clumsily welded to the doorframe. Getting through it was nearly nothing for a man with a stolen blowtorch and a lot of time on his hands. 

Down the rusty staircase it opened into was the secret bay where the ill-gotten goods had come in. According to an old construction worker’s tale, its original purpose had been for the ferrying of construction materials back when the tracks were still being built. It was to be sealed up and decommissioned once the work was done, but a pack of business savvy construction workers who’d been making a dime off of running Icelandic dairy products into a city with no cattle just couldn’t let that go to waste, now could they?

There were other doors from the nearby buildings that also led into it, but all of them were still as sealed as his had been at the start. As he preferred they be. 

The bathysphere was waiting for him, just as he’d left it. He’d found her in the perpetual trash heap that never got picked up near the pump station and carried her down here piece by piece in the dead of night. Most of the wiring had been stripped out by the time he’d gotten there and there’d been a massive dent in her side that was presumably the cause of her decommissioning. It hadn’t been easy, nursing something this broken back to life. 

The systems it ran on were similar enough to ones he’d worked on before, but tended towards greater complexity. There hadn’t exactly been a user’s manual with it in the trash. Further compounding the difficulty in figuring them out was the fact that so many of them had been looted for parts, leaving him with only halfway educated guesses to go on. Trial and error - that was the name of the game. It was slow, frustrating work, but gradually, he was getting somewhere. 

Today’s problem was convincing its navigation system to go from automatic to manual. Funny as it would have been if she up and decided to rejoin the transit system after everything he’d done for her, it wasn’t an ideal conclusion to the adventure. Yesterday, he’d finished wiring the crude set of controls he’d thrown together into the propulsion system. Now, getting the propulsion system to _listen_ to the commands he inputted - that was proving to be more difficult than he’d planned on. 

_Einar would have figured this out,_ was the useless, energy-draining thought that snaked its way into his mind every time he ran into a frustrating electrical problem.

 _Well, Einar isn’t here,_ he shot back at it, _Only me. I’ll have to do._

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worked alone on a project, without Einar to turn to. At no point in his career had he _ever_ been so cut off from the advice of other engineers. It felt, sometimes, as though he’d left behind a part of his brain on the surface that he hadn’t known existed, until its absence was felt.

He flicked on the flashlight he’d duck taped to a coat rack, put his stolen goods in their respective places on his workbench, picked out the set of tiny screwdrivers he’d stolen last month and got to work. 

It was too risky to play music down here. Too risky to do any more banging than what he absolutely needed to get the job done. He had no faith whatsoever in the soundproofing of his neighbors, if that of his own apartment was anything to go by. So he worked in complete silence, the spiralling thoughts he was able to distract himself well enough from during the day creeping up on him in the dark of the bay.

They were a headache that was constantly building behind his eyes, a hole in his chest that was going to consume all of him if he kept on ignoring it. They were thoughts he needed to think, things he knew he _needed_ to process - but not _yet._

Not until there was _time._

Not until it was _done._

Not until he could look back on Rapture as a terrible memory and know that he’d done _something_ to strike back against it. 

As he did every night in the silence that felt as heavy as the humidity in the air, he tamped the thoughts down and sought about for more pleasant ones to latch onto.

 _Fálki._

That was a good name for her. It’d come to him so suddenly, as though the bathysphere itself had somehow spoken it into his mind. For the past couple of nights, he’d been fiddling around with ideas in his head about what her name would be, just to pass the time. Veðrfölnir? Not snappy enough. Hræsvelgr? Way too grim. It was more likely that his subconscious had taken all that brainwork and horked up something that was the culmination of it.

It was a name he’d never paint her with or write down. In all likelihood, it would never exist outside his head. 

But...there was something so satisfying and _right_ about naming the craft he’d planned to escape in after the god who’d stolen back what he himself had lost and fled a giant’s wrath in the form of a falcon, a _fálki_.

At any rate, it was in keeping with the bird theme. He was nothing if not consistent.

-

Fálki was almost complete.

There were still a great many tests he had to run, yes. And yes, a lot of the work was of a rather slapdash manner and just looking at her triggered his compulsion to keep working on her until she was absolutely perfect, but...it was less than two hundred nautical miles to shore. That was all she needed to survive. He was so _close._

There was only one more item on his docket. 

It was a terrible idea - possibly the worst he’d ever had in his life. How easy it would have been, to flee without looking back, to melt away into society, to sell one more empty house and try to leave the memories it contained behind. Easy, that is, in comparison to what he _meant_ to do. 

Without evidence, not a soul on shore would believe him. Even if he had taken pictures, he suspected they’d be taken as movie sets or art pieces rather than hard journalism. It had been almost an entire year and even now, he _still_ found parts of it hard to believe, while looking straight at them no less. 

Ah, but a short film carefully documenting a graveyard full of ships that had gone missing within the past ten years, seamlessly followed by a tour of the impossible place that had brought them down? 

_That_ would get somebody’s attention.

If he left that film behind, it was as though he were abandoning Ken and Einar and Tryggvisson and Svalbard and everyone who had ever met the same fate in their watery graves. It felt like a betrayal of their memory.

Lately, he’d been more angry than he had been sad. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable state to be in - inches away from snapping at a customer or a coworker at all times, constantly hiding his true feelings about whatever asinine piece of propaganda was on the intercom today, acting, day after day, as though everything were fine and dandy and there was nothing at all on his mind other than the day’s work - but it was better than what he’d been like before. Anger was more functional than sorrow. Anger plotted and planned while its wet blanket counterpart laid on the couch and watched late night television for hours. 

Piece by piece, he refined his anger into a cold, hard plan.

-

There were two reasons why he had taken this job.

One, of course, was because he was qualified for it. Overqualified, frankly. With his skill and experience, he should have been some kind of project manager, or a designer. At the height of his fame, one company had even offered him a position in bathysphere design, despite his restriction on test driving them. It was tempting. But he’d let the opportunity pass him by and was not at all bothered by its loss or by his subsequent underemployment. 

_That_ was because of Reason Two.

Beneath her shining face, the city was riddled with the layers of a whole other, unseen city - of maintenance tunnels, of air intakes, of trash chutes, of the spaces behind the places where the seams didn’t quite fit together. It was the lower level maintenance workers who had free reign over the parts of the city that few bothered to look at. 

It had become almost too easy, slipping into places he wasn’t meant to be, charting routes through territory that even other maintenance workers sometimes forgot existed. Additionally, if he needed to get past a locked gate, it was only a matter of asking a coworker for the code. If he was seen somewhere he did not intend to be seen, he was only in there to fix a faulty connection or kickstart an air intake fan that had stopped working. His list of perfectly reasonable excuses was inexhaustible. 

Once the work on Fálki was nearly done, he had instead begun to spend a great deal of his off hours scoping out the crooked routes that would take him where he needed to go. It was lonely, dark, filthy, claustrophobic work but there was a joy in finding out just how much he could get away with right under the noses of the people dead set on keeping him here.

Slowly, but with purpose, he was charting his course into the Ryan Security Headquarters. 

It was tougher going than most other places he’d broken into. There were more cameras, more locked gates, more tripwires and once, a hallway lined with proximity mines ( _why?_ who in the nine levels of hell decided _that_ was a good idea in a tunnel that wasn’t the most structurally sound to begin with?). 

And then, there were the welded-into-the-wall grates that brought him to a dead stop every single time. Since nearly every grate he ran into had become one a screwdriver couldn’t open, he’d gotten into the habit of hauling an oxy-acetylene tank on his back to cut through them and if need be, repair them just enough to make it look as though he’d never been there.

The problem with the tank, though, was that it was less than optimal for...most any kind of physical activity. Climbing with it in narrow spaces was his own, particular nightmare.

The ventilation shaft which was the only way to bypass a thoroughly trapped corridor below just barely admitted his shoulders. To get through, he’d taken the tank off his back and hooked it to his belt. When he crawled, it banged uncomfortably between his knees and made a terrible sound despite the fabric he’d wrapped it in to muffle it. When he started climbing straight upward, it was an anchor that constantly threatened to drag him to the bottom. 

Somewhere up there was a junction that’d give him enough space to install a hook from which to hang a rope, making the climb a little less arduous for next time. He’d left a trail of carefully hidden hooks behind him, in the shafts that would have taken him much longer to climb if he’d had no rope to hold onto. Years in the future, he imagined, they’d eventually be discovered when enough debris had gotten caught on them to interfere with the functioning of the systems they were a part of. Not that he’d be around to care.

When he glanced up to check if he’d made it yet, the light from the flashlight taped to his hard hat revealed nothing but more narrow, scuzzy walls extending up into a black abyss. He was beginning to hope that he hadn’t taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the next building over. It was so much effort to expend on a mistake. The mere thought of it made him even more tired. But he was nothing if not stubborn and had made up his mind to keep going until he made it to some kind of landmark.

Every so often, when he felt himself weakening past the point that stubbornness could power through, he would brace his back against the wall behind him, his feet against the one in front and take a minute to rest. After one such rest, from which it was much harder than before to get moving again, he looked up to check his progress and the beam of his flashlight hit ceiling. It was like seeing the sun after having gone a year without.

Reminding himself not to get sloppy, he kept up the slow, steady pace, but couldn’t resist checking more frequently to see how close he’d gotten. He was about two meters down, a meter and a half, a-

When he next looked up, there was a face peering down at him. He only saw it for a split second, catching the impression of glowing yellow eyes, blue veined skin, lank hair.

He didn’t scream. He’d spent too long being too quiet in these tunnels to scream now. What came out was more of a strained gurgle. 

His foot slipped. He went plunging back where he came from, the tank and his flailing body banging against the metal walls like a gong. 

Just short of striking the bottom and snapping an ankle, or worse, he brought himself to a screeching halt with the thick rubber soles of his boots. For a moment, he braced himself there, catching his breath, calming his pounding heart. When he looked up, there was nothing to see beyond the narrow beam of the flashlight. 

Darkness played tricks with one’s eyes - he knew that much - and fatigue, even more so. But _why_ , why on God’s green earth would his imagination conjure _that thing_ , specifically?

He had to get out of there. Before someone came to investigate the ruckus he’d caused. Before he _completely_ lost it in the dark. 

The next night, after a good, long rest on his day off, he returned and made it to the junction without incident. 

It was silly, of course, to check for evidence of hallucinations. But as he was puzzling out the best spot to install the hook, he just couldn’t help himself. He tried to remember which side the face had been peering down from and peeked into the tunnel his memory suggested. 

The grunge coating the floor of it had definitely been disturbed and…

Here and there, it was dotted with tiny, undeniably human footprints. 

He sucked in his breath, forced it out of his mind and gave the spot he’d chosen to install the hook a quick wipe-down before getting to work.

-

It was only one more locked gate to get to the trash compactor. He’d opted to unscrew one side of it from the wall and slip through, avoiding the scrutiny tampering with the lock and chain would draw. When he was through, he screwed it back in just tight enough so that it took some effort to discover what had been done to it.

Climbing up on the lip of the trash compactor, jumping until he had hold of the bottom of the (greasy) trash chute and _then_ hauling himself up into it like a squirrel trying to get at a bird feeder - that was the tricky part. He fell into the trash compactor twice before succeeding. It was less falls than he unusually had, getting this far. An auspicious start.

Also, as he’d found out, one positive side effect of getting blasted in the face once with sewage was that no other bad smell was ever going to top that for the remainder of his life and so, a little (or a large amount of) garbage was no bother to his senses at all.

A few feet up the chute was the end of the rope he’d put in place to help with the climbing a week back. It was slick with grease and covered in fuzz, like every other part of the trash chute, but the sharkskin pads he’d sewn into the palms of his gloves helped him to keep a grip on it. 

It was especially vital that he keep quiet in here. There were places where the walls were so thin that he could hear people talking behind them. He lived in terror of someone going to throw away a sandwich wrapper and catching a glimpse of his face staring out from within the bin. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d do if that scenario came to pass. Luckily, he’d yet to find out. 

So, he moved carefully, the sound of his feet muffled by the covers on his shoes. He stopped every time he heard a sound that hadn’t been made by him and waited for whatever was making it to move along. 

At one point, there was a peal of laughter from up above him and a pep bar wrapper came fluttering down to rest on his shoulder. He waited a full minute before daring to breathe, brush it off and carry on.

The underside of the trash bin he was aiming for was marked with a circle of red grease pencil. For a few minutes, he braced himself against the walls and listened for any signs of life beyond it. When he could make out none no matter how hard he strained and saw nothing when he peered through the slot, he held his breath and pushed the bin free of the wall. The bolts that secured it to the floor had been cut off just below the heads. From the other side, nothing looked out of the ordinary about it. Unless someone felt the sudden need to pick it up, there was no telling that it had been tampered with at all. 

Devon crawled out of the hole and gave the office a quick once-over. It was empty and dim, illuminated only by the lights of the city outside its sweeping vista of a window. On the desk was a hunk of coral with a nameplate that read ‘CSO J. Sullivan.’ Devon smiled at it, endlessly delighted that this particular office had just so happened to have been the one best suited to his needs. 

Carefully, he fit the trash bin back into the wall socket and pulled the office chair over to where he needed it. Stashed behind one of the ceiling tiles was a change of clothes. Most of them were his best approximation of a Ryan Security uniform, but the jacket…

That was the real deal. They’d forgotten it, all those months ago when someone had first handed it to him in the interrogation room. It was just about the biggest stroke of luck he’d had in this miserable city.

He changed and freshened up in the police chief’s private restroom, with its brass taps and marble floor. Then he made faces in the mirror, trying out the classic security officer sneer of disdain, the humble, wheedling expression of a sycophant and the cold stare of someone just following orders. Then he stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. He laughed silently, ridiculously, inside himself. 

_Fun,_ he thought, _That’s a foreign concept._

After he’d taken a few deep breaths to compose himself, he dumped his old clothes down the chute, fixed the tile and put the chair back where he’d found it. 

When he peered through the peephole, there was no one out there in his line of vision. The building was far from empty at night, but the late shift was a smaller one. He unlocked the door, put his hand on the knob and realized how dry his mouth was. 

One mouthful of water from the sink and he was ready to rip the band aid off.

As he walked through the not-quite-silent halls, he had to remind himself, repeatedly, to stand up straight, to appear confident that he belonged here. He had spent so much time hunched over, making himself invisible in a crowd, that it had become his normal posture. That explained the neck pain he’d never had to deal with before he came down here. He hadn’t even noticed until he had to think about _not_ doing it.

On the surface - there, he wouldn’t _have_ to be invisible. He only had to hold out a little while longer. It was almost over.

His heart thudded in his chest when a pair of officers talking amongst themselves brushed by him, but he offered them an effortless-looking smile and a nod. One of them nodded back at him and immediately turned back to his compatriot. The tension in his shoulders lessened somewhat when they were gone. 

He’d made it to the lockup - where confiscated items were kept. It was behind a set of tall, foreboding-looking steel doors held shut with a lock the thickness of his wrist. Impossible to get through, unless he had several uninterrupted hours to deal with the door and all the alarms it was probably attached to. 

Good thing there was one other way in, then. Probably. He wouldn’t know for sure until he got there.

In the communal showers around the corner, there was a largish drainage grate. The drainage system of every floor of the building culminated into a central pipe that ran down the middle of the building and transported it back to the water purification plant the company was currently paying dues to. He’d learned about this off of an old set of blueprints he’d dug out of the engineering department’s archives, on a day that he’d said he was in there to research something related to a job.

The blueprint’s ink was faded and the handwriting on it was only slightly more legible than a child’s squiggles, but it looked an _awful lot_ like there was another drainage grate in the lockup itself, one big enough for him to crawl through. Most of his instincts said it was too good to be true. But he had to _try._ And if he failed? Well, he’d just keep trying for however long it took.

For now, he shut the door, hung up his outer layer of clothes in a locker, put the roll of duck tape he’d brought along around his wrist like a bracelet, pried the grate up off the floor - and shivered, looking down at the tiny space below. He’d been in some tight spaces in his life, sometimes purposefully, just to see how hard he could make Ken cringe. But this...this was _seriously_ small. 

He could fit it, but he’d be flat on his face the entire time. If he stretched his arms out in front of him, he’d be unable to draw them back without getting stuck. There were coffins he’d seen with more leg room.

But worrying about it wasn’t getting it _done._

Devon went down, headfirst, slowly lowering the grate back down with his feet as he squirmed deeper inside. He winced as it clanged softly back into place behind him. 

Inside, it was dark, damp and smelled of mildew. He was crawling through the soap scum and slime left behind by a thousand showers, his undershirt soaking it up like a mop. When the pipe started to tilt downwards, he felt himself sliding forward and was momentarily in terror that he’d get flushed down the pipe and end up in the next batch of purified water. 

But the pipe wasn’t big enough to fall into. He felt it out in the dark and crawled over it. There was only one other connecting pipe that was big enough for him to fit through. He found it and slowly started climbing upwards, this time fighting against the layer of slime that was making him slip backwards. This one’s air had a strange tang to it. It was familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Some half-formed memory of it put a knot in his stomach, but doggedly, he kept going.

At last, the dimmest of lights shone up ahead. He latched onto it hungrily with his eyes and kept crawling at the same pace he’d been going, but this time with the thinnest flutter of hope in his chest. 

Under the grate, there was room enough to flip over. He laid at the bottom of it for a moment, looking up at a ceiling with one naked lightbulb hanging from it, catching his breath. Nothing stirred in the still air above.

When he was confident no one was out there, he wrapped his fists around the bars of the grate and tried to lift it free. After several minutes of blind panic and wishing that he’d thought to work on his bench press beforehand, he finally freed himself. This was followed by another brief moment of panic when he found that his legs were stuck in the pipe. Luckily, it didn’t take him too long to figure out that sitting back down and easing himself out fixed the problem well enough. 

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a chair in front of him, bolted into the ugly concrete of the floor. It almost looked as though it’d been snatched from a patio set, but…

Dangling from each armrest was a set of glinting handcuffs. On the matching table beside it, there was a brightly colored cafeteria tray set with an array of pliers, kitchen knives and hypodermic needles. Behind the chair, a leaky hose trailed out of a mop closet, its puddle dripping down the downward slope of the floor and into the rusty stain that trailed down the drain. The same stain that, he realized, looking down with creeping horror, was smeared down the front of his undershirt.

He took an unsteady step back and felt the sudden urge to tear it off and never touch it again, to find any other way out of this room, out of this _building_ , out of this _city_. 

_No. No, stop it, _he told himself, putting a hand over his heart and trying to steady his breathing, _That isn’t productive. You don’t have time.___

__He tore his eyes away and there, at the far end of the cavernous room, amid the shelves laden with carefully labeled crates, was the Muninn II._ _

__She was on her side, the hatch thrown open, the harpoon that had towed her in still stuck fast through the loop by which she had once been hoisted by crane. The finish he’d worked so hard to keep smooth was covered in scratches and there was a dent in the side that was resting on the floor that definitely hadn’t been there before._ _

__It was like returning home from a long absence to discover that the pet he’d left behind had been abused. With a sad smile, he gave her a pat before sticking his head through the hatch._ _

__He pulled out the tiny flashlight that he’d stashed in the pocket he’d sewn into his boxers. The inside wasn’t in any better condition than the outside. Worse, actually. The entire control panel had been pulled out of the wall and hung on a set of frayed wires. The seat had been slashed open and its stuffing pulled out, the snowy pieces of its foam still filling the cockpit._ _

__He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. They’d searched it so thoroughly. It was natural that they _would_ search it, of course - what officers of a hidden city’s (so called) law wouldn’t? But the fact that they’d been so gung-ho about it - that concerned him. Did it mean that they’d suspected he’d been hiding something?_ _

__There wasn’t any time to dwell on it. He had to keep moving. The floor was untouched - that was the only thing that mattered. He brushed a clump of fuzz aside and stuck his pinky finger in the notch that opened the panel, revealing the combination lock below. With a pang of sadness, he keyed in the combination. His own birthday. Einar had programmed it._ _

__The film was in a plastic case they’d designed to be waterproof, once it was free of the floor. He carefully unspooled the part of it that was wrapped around the camera’s workings and tucked it inside. From the quick look he’d given, it appeared to be undamaged._ _

__For a moment, after all this time, he couldn’t believe that he was actually holding it in his hands. He had to pause for a second to steady himself, to remember that the job wasn’t over and that the celebrating would have to wait no matter how long he’d been working towards this. He took a deep breath and held it to his chest for a moment before snapping into action._ _

__Just to be absolutely certain of its waterproofing, he sealed the edge in duck tape. Then he taped it to his lower back, wrapping loop after loop of tape around his belly until he was satisfied that it was secure. He made sure that everything was as he’d found it in the Muninn II and then…_ _

__With a lump in his throat, crept back to the grate._ _

____

-

Someone had stepped into the showers while he was on the other side. Whoever it was, he was humming the jingle for that daycare center that never failed to skeeve him out. Something about a lion who ate mouse pie.

But today, Devon was a little busy _trying not to drown_ to be too skeeved out by it. He’d managed to turn his head so that only one nostril was submerged in the onslaught of shower water that was pouring down the pipe and trying not to panic when it splashed up into his other nostril anyway. If there was one more person showering up there, he absolutely would’ve been sunk. 

The smallness of the pipe was crushing the plastic case against his lower back. There was an itch on his ankle that he had no way of reaching. His shoulders were getting sore from having been stretched out for so long. He tried to remember what it was like to move his legs, to sit up, to have more than one nostril to breathe out of, whether the days where those things had been possible had happened at all or if he’d been born in the pipe and grown up in the pipe and this was just him waking up from the dream that had been his life.

 _It’d be a simpler life_ , he thought, unhelpfully.

Just when he was about to start screaming and thrashing at the walls - the tap squeaked. The water stopped. He breathed - and held his breath to stop from coughing. His lungs were desperately trying to betray him by loudly disgorging what they’d inhaled. It made his chest hurt and his eyes water to hold the spasm down. 

But he waited, tense, until he heard the sound of the door clicking shut overhead.

Then he scrambled out and coughed for all he was worth.

-

It was so much easier to stand up straight on the way back than it had been on the way forward. He’d checked in the bathroom mirror before departing - if he slouched too much, the case made a visible lump through the jacket. The feel of it on his back reminded him to stand up, but it wasn’t only that that was doing it. He felt as though he’d accomplished something. He felt, for the first time in a long while, as though he was _worth_ something.

There was only one person he had to pass by on his way back to the chief’s office and he was so engrossed in a comic book that he didn’t even give him the time of night. Getting back to the office was as easy as a summer breeze.

Most of the way down the trash chute, his exhaustion caught up with him, his arms gave out and he fell the last seven feet straight down into the trash compactor. For a moment, he lay there, dazed, among the food detritus and smelly unmentionables he’d rather not put too much thought into. The film jabbed painfully into his back as he stared up at the chute from which he’d come. He bit his lip to stop from laughing out loud.

He’d _done it_. Tired as he was, he felt lighter than air. The way out through the tunnels and ducts and backstage props was a blur. Before he stepped back out into the realm of the seen, he brushed himself off as best he could and ripped the chains off his sleeves. It was only slightly less inconspicuous, but, at this hour of the night, a man covered in garbage and grinning from ear to ear was hardly the strangest passenger aboard the train back to the Drop. 

He kept an eye on the odd pair with the drooping eye sockets, patchy skin and twitchy movements with whom he’d rode the train a couple of times before at this hour of the night and for once, felt safer because of them. 

When he’d hopped the puddle and locked the apartment door behind him, he let out the breath he’d been holding for a year. 

By the time he’d stowed the evidence away, showered and fallen into bed, he was ready for the most restful sleep he’d had in months.

-

“Hey.” Navarro said, peeking around the open door of Devon’s locker, “Me and you - Sinclair Spirits. What d’you say?”

“Y’know…” Devon said, hanging up his apron and turning to him with a smile, “I think I’d like that.”

“Whoa!”

Navarro clutched his heart and staggered backward exaggeratedly.

“Next thing I know, you’ll be, what? Going to the _movies_?”

“Whoa, now.” he said with a laugh, “Don’t be talking _too_ crazy just yet. I’ll be with you in half a second.”

He glanced in the shard of mirror stuck in the locker door, wiped the smudge of oil from his nose with his sleeve and put on a jacket that was marginally cleaner than the shirt it was covering. Navarro was waiting for him in the hall, tapping his toe impatiently, despite the almost-literal half-second it had taken. 

It felt so _good_ to be getting out for no other reason than fun, even if it was with a coworker he didn’t particularly like, at a venue that he didn’t particularly enjoy. He hadn’t entirely realized how lonely he’d been all these months until the only thing he’d needed to do was wait and watch for the right time to make his exit. Not particularly likeable company was still company, he supposed. 

As they passed by Kyburz’s office, the man himself still grimacing at his daily mound of paperwork, Devon waved goodbye through the open doorway.

“Oh, Keighley!” he said, getting up from his desk and rushing toward them, “Might I bother you to come in a little early tomorrow? Say, ten-to? There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

“Oh, no, nothing bad!” he continued quickly, waving his arms defensively when Devon made a face, “Promise.”

“You’re the boss.” he answered, with a shrug, “I’ll be there.”

“Wonderful!” he said, his tired face cracking into a smile, “Have a good night out.”

“Goodnight, Kyburz.”

“And goodnight, Navarro!” Kyburz called out, leaning out the door to wave at his backside, “Don’t cause _too_ much trouble before tomorrow morning!”

“Mmm.” Navarro grunted, not even pausing to look at him on his way to the bathysphere depot.

He was already pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and sticking it in his mouth when Devon caught up with him. The rule was that nobody was allowed to smoke around the cores and he was always a bit grumpy at the end of the day because of it. It was understandable.

He became instantly more agreeable after Devon had shut the bathysphere door behind them and he was relaxing in a cloud of smoke.

-

“So I walk into this club...I think...two months ago, now?” Devon said, fruitlessly trying to wave the smoke away from his face, “Yeah, two months. Anyway, I walk into this club and - I’m still not sure if I was dreaming or _what_ but...it’s full of rabbits. Honest-to-god _rabbits_. W-With the cotton ball tails! And the pink noses! Just…it had to have been two dozen of them, at least...just _hopping_ all around the bar, like they live there. And nobody batting an eye.”

Navarro blew out a perfect smoke ring.

“Did they shit?” he asked, the contented look on his face changing to one of worry as the thought occurred to him.

Devon chuckled.

“Well, I mean, _presumably_. But I didn’t exactly stick around long enough to see it happen, y’know? Anyway, there’s _people_ dressed like rabbits in there too.”

“Hm.”

“Though honestly, I didn’t even _notice_ them at first. What with the...actual rabbits...and all.”

Navarro wasn’t giving any indication as to whether he was enjoying the story or not. He thought it was funny, at least. Ken would’ve laughed. Shit, was his sense of humor eroding down here too?

“So I track down the owner and ask him what the problem is.” he continued anyway, “And he says that the root of all his problems lie within his tortured artist’s soul which no amount of fame or critical acclaim can fix and he _looks_ like he’s about to launch into some kind of dramatic recitation that I’d _really_ rather not be a part of, so before he can get too far, I say ‘But perhaps I could fix your electrical problems at least’ and he says ‘Oh.’ Just…’Oh.’ Looked like I’d stepped on one of his pets.”

The tiniest of chuckles from Navarro. See, it _was_ a funny story. Maybe not as funny as he thought it was, but well, you can’t please every audience.

“Then he takes me to this...it’s some kind of stage he’s got in the back and dangling from the ceiling is this godforsaken, _awful_ con - ah.”

They were here. Navarro was already throwing open the door. Devon made a face behind his back when he flicked his cigarette butt into the pool they’d just surfaced from. Why did people _do_ that when there was, no doubt, a perfectly good ashtray in the bar? More than a few overenthusiastic partygoers ended up swimming in that pool, he knew.

He tried to put the thought out of his mind as he stepped out into the chaos of the station.

 _Fun,_ he thought, _We’re going to stop thinking and just have some fun tonight. You’ve earned it._

The station was filled to capacity with weekenders, the roar of their combined voices overpowered only by the raucous music blasting from the loudspeakers. The walls were a mess of loud neon and brightly colored advertisements posted one over the other. All of it put together was enough to give him a headache.

"Save it for when I've got a drink in me!" Navarro yelled over the ruckus, stopping for a moment before rushing into the crowd, "I am _parched!_ "

He was gone before Devon could fully parse what he’d said, making the fastest beeline he’d ever seen anyone make for a bar. Just how parched did a person have to _get_ , before it made them that inconsiderate of their drinking companions?

Briefly, he considered turning around and climbing right back in the bathysphere. But no, no, he was going to have _fun_ tonight, dammit. Even if he had to drag it out of an unfun companion. 

He’d barely taken five steps into the crowd when a hand grabbed him by the wrist. 

Another hand cut off his scream. His struggle was abruptly halted by the feeling of something cold and hard jabbing into his lower back.

“Shhhhh.” Gelber said, slowly removing his hand from his mouth and putting a finger on his own lips, “Say a word and Marston’ll take out one of your kidneys. Not _my_ words, you understand. But...ah…”

He hooked a handcuff on the wrist he was squeezing the life out of and let it go. The other cuff was on his own wrist, peeking out from beneath the sleeve of a jacket that wasn’t his uniform.

He shrugged, dragging Devon’s arm along with the motion.

“You know how Marston is. Now that _that_ unpleasantness is out of the way...”

He smiled.

“Been a long time, hasn’t it, eh, Mr. Topsider? We _really_ should get together more often. Like...say… _tonight_. I’ve got _just_ the place.”

-

Navarro could have cared less about the stealing. Hell, he nabbed a few bucks from under Kyburz's nose every now and again. The man saw the best in everyone. It was too damn _easy_ to steal from him.

No, he gave far less than a damn about the tools that went missing in that overblown sensation’s presence. It wasn't his problem, or his business. A mild annoyance, sure, when he had to walk twenty steps over and borrow what he should have had already from the next department over. But a problem? Nah. He could deal with a fellow compadre lining his pockets. It was understandable, in this junk heap of a rabbit shit filled city.

But when Kyburz starts fingering the sticky-fingered newbie for a promotion when _he's_ put in _years_ of work for it, ah, well...that was when it abruptly _became_ his business.

The nice man from the security company had been so eager to finally work with him. Him and his buddies had been harassing Navarro and a few other guys from maintenance on and off for months, ever since the press got word of where their darling had been hired. He’d been ignoring them for so long that he’d practically forgotten they were there. The black-coated man had been just as surprised as he was when _he_ was the one who’d approached him this time. 

Once he’d given him his info and volunteered his services, the nice officer had even offered him a little something-something under the table, courtesy of Ryan Industries. Navarro had refused, of course - really, they were the ones who were doing him a favor and blood money was exactly one step further than his pride was willing to let him go - but if a bottle of scotch should show up in his pneumo tube one day, he’d told him that he wouldn’t be adverse to that. 

He slowed his pace. He was alone, but for the swirl of strangers flowing through the station. If he was coming, he would’ve caught up by now, wouldn’t he? It _had_ to have happened by now.

For a second, he was paralyzed with dread about what he would see if he turned around, which was made doubly dreadful by an intense compulsion to see exactly _that._

Leaving himself no time to think about it and chicken out, he spun around on his heel.

There was nothing there but a faceless crowd and an empty bathysphere awaiting its next customer.

-

“Would you put that thing away, Marston?” Gelber asked, once he’d shoved Devon through the revolving door, “We’re in the clear.”

“In the _clear_?” Marston answered, through gritted teeth, his face contorted as though it had smelled something truly horrific, “You want me to believe we’re _ever_ in the clear with this guy?”

Gelber waggled Devon’s limp wrist on the end of its chain. Devon winced. Marston was no longer jabbing the gun into his back, but he could feel it trained on him like the light focused through a magnifying glass, burning into his chest. 

“C’mon, Mar. What’s he gonna do?” Gelber chided, “Punch my lights out? Stab me with a paper clip? You got a job to do, man. I’ll be fine.”

He pointed at the suitcase in Marston’s other hand. Marston rolled his eyes. With a sigh and without putting his gun away, he backed around a counter. He set the suitcase down to fumble, one-handed, for the doorknob of a door he refused to turn around and look at.

They were inside a movie theater, Devon realized. There was no one behind the concessions counter and the ticket booth was equally empty. The pattern on the carpet made his eyes hurt but when he looked up at the gold moulding on the ceiling, that was worse. He felt like he was either going to vomit or pass out and squeezed his eyes shut to make it stop. When he opened them, it was to see the unmistakable trembling of his hands. 

“Such _terrible_ things I’ve been hearing about you, Johnny-boy!” Gelber was saying, as he tugged him, irresistibly, step by step across the lobby, “I couldn’t _believe_ it when I heard.”

“I did!” Marston yelled, poking his head out through the door he’d finally managed to get through.

“Fuck _off_ , Marston.”

Marston made a sour(er) face and backed away behind the door.

“ _Theft_ of company property? Like… _w-what_? A _common household parasite_? No, no, no, surely not! Such _awful_ slander they were slingin’ at my old buddy. I _had_ to set the record straight.”

What could he _do_? If he was doing anything, he had to do it _now_ , while they were separated. But there was nothing within arm’s reach, nothing in his pocket but his wallet and he was certain if he tried to wrestle Gelber’s gun out of its holster, it would be much worse for him than it would be for Gelber. He wished he had a paperclip. He wished that there had been a gap in security that one bathysphere could slip through two days ago.

“Oho!” Gelber yelled, abruptly tearing him out of his thoughts as he lunged at something, dragging the arm he was handcuffed to him by after him.

“Look at that!” he said excitedly, throwing open the door of the popcorn machine, “Still warm. And packaged up so nice for us! Thought of everything, didn’t they? Well, I certainly paid ‘em enough...”

He shoved a greasy paper bag of popcorn into Devon’s free hand. A few kernels spilled on the carpet. More followed after them. 

_Stop it,_ he begged his faithless hand, _Stop it before Gelber sees._

If there was _nothing_ he could do, then...he would give him _nothing_ that gave him any semblance of satisfaction. It was an oddly calming thought. The one sliver of power he had left. He felt the tiniest bit less dizzy.

"Any-hoo" Gelber said, scooping up his bag of popcorn and heading for the theater door, "Theft of Ryan Industry property is _very_ serious busi”- 

Devon interrupted with a muffed grunt of pain when the door came flying back to hit him in the face after Gelber had gone through. He angrily shoved it open with his popcorn-laden hand, crushing the bag against the door, to discover that Gelber’s back was to him and that he apparently had no idea of what had just transpired behind it.

“So the boss gave us leave to search the premises while you were away…” he went on, nonchalantly, “And what. We. _Found._ ”

He abruptly stopped and turned around to leer, showing all his horrible teeth in his horrible mouth. Involuntarily, Devon backed up a step, though the cuff bit into his wrist.

“ _Hooooooeeee…_ ” he said, with an even more wicked grin, as he jerked him forward, “It was quite a bit more than we bargained for, let me tell _you_.” 

Which one of them had done it? Kyburz? Norris? No… _that_ was why Navarro hadn’t laughed at a club full of rabbits. 

Bastard.

“Here we are, best seats in the house!” Gelber sang out, hurrying down the row of seats in the exact middle of the theater, “Not in the nosebleeds and not so close that you crane your neck to watch. Nice, right? _Sit_."

He tugged him down into a folding chair with more roughness than was necessary. Half the remaining popcorn spilled in his lap.

"Oh _c'mon_." Gelber chided, clucking his tongue, "Have some respect for the janitor, will ya? Marston! You ready?"

Surely prying an armrest off and beaming him in the head with it wasn’t a feasible plan. 

“Uh...five minutes.” Marston yelled down from somewhere above them, “Gimme five more minutes.”

“You said you did this in high school!”

“That was _fifteen years_ ago!”

He’d slipped his fingers under the armrest while they were talking. Solid. Not a wiggle to be found. And the screws were tight. The only thing under there was what felt like a wad of gum.

“Well, _I_ can still till a field fifteen years later!”

“Well, _field tilling mechanics_ haven’t changed in...Gelber, I don’t know if _this is compatible_.”

 _Blow a bubble in his eyes with pre-chewed gum_ , the part of his brain that grasped at every straw suggested.

 _Great plan. Fucking phenomenal,_ a snider part spat back, _He’s just going to let you blow a bubble in his face, then? And where will you run when he’s blind?_

“Look, if I force it, it could damage the”-

“I don’t _CARE._ ”

If not for the padding on the walls, his voice would have echoed. Devon’s right ear was ringing from it. No one spoke for a good ten seconds. 

“Okay.” Marston finally answered, in the smallest audible voice, “ _Okay…_ ”

The lights went down. The projector flickered to life. Gelber was crunching on popcorn with his mouth open, dropping crumbs down his front, a big smile on his face, the rage that had been there seconds before, gone as though it had never been.

The image was murky and difficult to make out at first. But then again, he didn’t need to see it to know what it was. 

Sunken ships in a soundless void. Their names and positions carefully documented, one by one.

“Kind of a slow start.” Gelber whispered, leaning over and spitting popcorn on his shoulder as he spoke, “And I gotta say, the editing could use some work. But it builds tension though, don’t it?”

Devon had to stare at his feet to keep from losing it. His eyes were misting over. He was blinking furiously to stop the inevitable. 

_Nothing. Give him nothing._

_But it’s over. It’s really over._

Gelber was breathing on him. He could feel the heat of his breath on his cheek and smell its stink. It was more repulsive than any trash compactor he’d ever been in.

“Heeey.” he was saying, every stretched out syllable a prolongation of suffering, “Heeeeey now! You’re about to miss the best part!”

Devon gasped as he reached over without warning and jerked his chin up with two fingers. A single tear escaped and ran down his cheek.

Rapture, rising up just beyond the graveyard, her lights sweeping across the ocean’s depths.

“Now _that_...that’s a good shot.” Gelber said, releasing him to point at the screen excitedly, “Just _beautiful_. Look at the framing!”

_Tryggvisson is dead. I didn’t see what happened with Svalbard but there’s no way he...and Einar...I’m...I’m so sorry, I tried but…I-I...I have to-_

Static in his ears and all of them sinking, sinking, sinking into the black abyss. Their squabbles, their stories, their frustrations, their love - gone from this world and the truth of their fates - erased.

The city faded into a blur as tears poured down his face.

“ _Awwwwwww_. Gonna cry?” Gelber said, patronizingly, leering through the veil of tears, “Gonna have a weepy-weep? Well, _fuck you._ ”

The force of his fist slamming into his jaw sent all thought but that of the pain reeling from his mind. A low sound escaped his throat as he clutched at his face.

“I _stick_ my _neck_ out for _you_ and...and...th… _this_ is the thanks I get?”

Gelber was gesturing furiously at the movie screen. An image of the main drag of Rapture swam before his watering eyes.

He felt his nose snap under the force of the second blow and tasted blood.

“The worst security breach of my _career_ and...and a fucking _escape pod_ all set and ready to take it to the _surface_!”

He grabbed his ear and twisted it hard. Devon gritted his teeth, suppressing even the tiniest cry of pain that he knew would give him too much pleasure.

“I was rooting for you, y’know? I might’ve shot you on the spot and _no one would have given a damn._ What’s one more downed ship in the scrap heap? Not anything important, that’s for sure.”

He spat on his face and let go of his ear. Devon breathed in a shaky breath.

“Well?”

He was waiting, his expression like stone.

Devon only stared back, his eyes like a pair of black holes.

Gelber made an expression of disgust, but in there, in his eyes - the slightest touch of fear.

“Say _something_!” he screamed, his voice squeaking on the last syllable.

The next blow caught him on the edge of his eye socket.

“Fight _back_...god...dammit.”

He could already feel his eye swelling shut. 

He opened his other one, just in time to see him shaking out the hand he’d punched him with, as though he’d hurt it on the bones of his skull. 

Devon chuckled. _Why_ was that so funny? Oh, his sense of humor really was out of whack, wasn’t it? It only got funnier if he thought about it. The chuckle turned into a breathless laugh. 

Gelber’s expression changed. For a moment, he stared, the stark terror in his eyes having spread to the rest of his face. And then-

“ _Raaargh!_ ”

He was on the floor, being dragged through spilt popcorn and across sticky carpet by his arm. He had no memory of falling or being hit, though the pain in his jaw and the ringing in his ears said otherwise. He felt weightless, immaterial. Up above, the movie still played, the edges of the image bubbling and boiling as the film burned away.

“Marston!” Gelber yelled up at the projection booth, his voice sounding as though he were shouting from the end of a tunnel, “Pack it up. We’re _done_.”

When he looked down and saw Devon was conscious, he jerked him to his feet and shoved him out the door. After he had shambled unsteadily to the lobby, the cuff digging into his wrist the whole way there, his legs gave out again. He gave a small cry of distress as he went down and a gob of blood with a tooth in it fell out of his mouth, hitting the carpet with the pattern that seemed to vibrate when he looked at it. For a moment, he stared, watching the blood soak into the design. A mark that he’d existed. A piece of evidence that they couldn’t get rid of unless they were of a mind to take out the entire carpet. Gelber hauled him to his feet by the collar before he could stare too long. 

He was giving him a strange look. 

After giving him that look for an uncomfortably long time, he let go of his collar and waited a second to see if Devon was going to remain standing. When he didn’t fall again, he used his free hand to undo his belt and pop the button on his fly. 

Devon’s breath caught in his throat. When he tried to get close, he threw a wild punch that glanced off Gelber’s jaw and brought a mad smile to his face. He was equally undeterred when he clawed and scratched at every piece of exposed skin he could reach with the one hand he still had control over. Gelber let loose a triumphant laugh when he managed to get behind him and twist his handcuffed arm as painfully as he could.

With a scream, Devon reared backwards, seeing stars when the back of his head connected with something hard behind him. Gelber cried out in pain, but before Devon was able to do anything else, he slammed him against the concession counter and forced his head down on top of the glass. He could see boxes of brilliantly colored candy through it, a row of candied apples, a stack of chocolate bars. All of them were pulsing with a painful light.

For a moment, Gelber just stood there, catching his breath, crushing Devon’s face against the glass. The second he let go, Devon sprang back up and drove his elbow into his ribs. Gelber screamed and swore as he grabbed hold of the arm that was inches away from doing it again. 

“Marston!” he screamed, upon seeing the projection booth door open, “Help me out, here! I’ve only got one - _aaaargh_ -a-arm!”

Marston’s eyes darted around the scene, his sour face at first registering fear, then worry, then confusion. 

“Just hold ‘im _down._ ” Gelber snapped, “It’ll only - _urgh_ \- take ten minutes.”

Devon saw the pieces click together in Marston’s brain. Slowly, he shook his head.

“ _Mar-r-r-st-o-on!_ ” he forced out through gritted teeth as Devon ground his heel into his foot.

“Hey, now.” Marston said, setting the suitcase down with a nervous smile and putting his empty palms in the air, “You...uh… _we_ did what you wanted. Got what... _we_ came here for, so...why don’t we just...go?”

“MARSTON, YOU PIECE OF _SHIT._ ” Gelber roared, spraying the back of Devon’s neck with spittle and making his eardrums ring, “WHO THE _FUCK_ DO YOU THINK IS IN CHARGE HERE? WHO GOT YOU THIS JOB? THIS WAS _MY_ IDEA, SO IT’S _MY_ ”-

“...rules.” Marston finished softly. He was trembling at the force of the verbal onslaught.

A beat of silence passed.

“Well?” Gelber snapped, “Before one of us takes out the other, _preferably_.”

He let go of Devon’s arm and punched him hard, in the ribs. When he took a moment to catch his breath, Gelber’s free hand made a beeline for his belt. Devon dug his nails into the back of it and it jerked away.

“Gah! His _arm_ , dimwit. Just...just grab it.”

Slowly, his squinty eyes wider than he’d ever seen them, Marston crept forward. Devon jerked his arm out of his grip once, but on the second attempt, he caught him around the wrist.

“Marston…” Devon said softly, looking him in the eye, his bottom lip trembling. His whole body was trembling. He couldn’t control it any longer.

Marston looked away.

“And bend him over the counter!” Gelber snarled, “Go on...do I have to tell you how to piss too?”

A brief look of anger flashed across his face before it was replaced with sadness when he was forced to make eye contact again. With a terrible gentleness, he reached up and took hold of a hank of Devon’s hair. 

“ _Please…_ ” Devon whispered, a tear slipping from his one working eye.

Slowly, looking away all the while, he forced him back down onto the counter.

Gelber’s hand snaked around to paw at his belt.

-

Stan didn’t use the radio in his closet terribly often anymore. He had a better one in his office and spent more time there than at home anyway. Still, it was nice to have options, especially when those options were illegal in all but name. Or on the rare occasion when he did end up spending more time than he’d bargained for at home.

Some time ago, he had run a temperature that was bad enough to keep him down for a few days, from those artist commune sickos, no doubt. As sick in the body as they were in the head. He’d laid there on the couch, miserably imagining all the scoops slipping through his fingers as he stuck cold compress after cold compress on his head and covered the sitting room floor with tissues. Eventually, he remembered that he had a second VHF radio and that maybe it’d make him feel better if he could overhear some scoops that he could blackmail Ryan into paying for without actually having to write a word. 

He shoved his way into his too-full closet, realized he’d forgotten his flashlight halfway through, backed up, found it and then finally made his way inside, having expended way more effort on the task than he’d meant to. 

When he first saw how the dust on the long-unused radio had been disturbed, he’d chalked it up to his fever. Later on, clear-headed investigation revealed that it hadn’t been in his head after all. Someone had been here. Someone other than him.

But that was _impossible._ He couldn’t remember the last time he’d invited anyone in (who would want to, in a dump like this?). Except…

Except he hadn’t invited _him_ in, had he?

Unless some mystery person had broken in while he was away and left no trace, there were no other suspects. 

For a moment, he felt a surge of paranoia that Lamb had discovered his true motivations and sent someone after him but, no, no, that just didn’t make _sense_. Hire some muscle to shake a guy down but only have him fiddle with a radio before going on his way? That was _ludicrous_.

Dammit.

He was such a good cash cow. Circulation had never been better.

Briefly, he considered the thought that a scandal would _also_ be good for circulation, but truth be told, it wasn’t much of a lead. So, he contacted someone - or tried to, at any rate. Big whoop. There was no way to prove who it was, if he’d succeeded or what they’d said. 

He had dropped the matter, but hadn’t entirely forgotten about it.

His memory was very much jogged by what he’d heard on a working lunch break some months later. 

Most everyone else on his floor had gone out to eat. He’d gotten stuck behind, desperately trying to finish up a piece that should’ve been done yesterday. He was listening to the wavelength Ryan Security communicated on, while he worked on it, more or less for background noise. There was something soothing about the static, occasionally pierced by voices saying (mostly) mundane things. And besides, he never knew what he was going to pick up.

“ _Chief, you need to get down here._ ” a crackly voice said, with more than a little urgency.

Stan perked up at that and immediately stopped what he was doing, his fingers poised over the typewriter.

“ _Where is ‘here’, Maybank?_ ”

“ _245 Skid Row, Apartment B. The Drop, sir._ ”

That was the cash cow’s address. He was sure of it. He’d scoped it out and gone there to bother him for one more interview once or twice or...maybe a few more times than that.

“ _And_ why _might something in the Drop demand my personal attention? If it’s_ one more _copyright-infringing gene clinic, so help me, just bust down the door. You know the drill._ ”

“ _No, sir. It’s…_ ”

He’d lost the signal. With a grunt of frustration, he tore open the desk door that was a front for where he’d installed the radio and gave it a sharp rap. It shocked him in return, but he got the signal back. He shook out his hand, trying to restore feeling to it.

“ _...athysphere in that old smugglers’ bay that’s set up for sea travel, looks like and inside it, well...there’s pictures of Rapture. Little ones. In a sequence. And uh…_ ”

He got quieter.

“ _And the shipyard._ ”

“ _Maybank._ ”

“ _Yessir?_ ”

“ _Radio silence until I get there. Do you hear me?_ ”

“ _Yessir. Loud and clear._ ”

Stan’s heart was racing. He popped the cap on the flask he kept in his desk, fumbled around for the benzo he’d left in his pocket last night and then shoved both of them in his mouth. After he swallowed, the cherry liqueur burning as it went down his throat, he burst out laughing. He thumped his hand on the desk until tears were flowing down his face.

 _That son of a gun_ , he thought, _That goddamn son of a smoking gun._

When he’d calmed down enough, he wiped his tears away and realized that he couldn’t help but admire a long game like that. No, he wasn’t even _mad_ at how close he’d come to blowing Rapture’s cover. That took _skill_. That took more chutzpah than he had in his _entire body_. 

What a good cash cow he’d been to the end. This, here, _this_ was a scoop that was too good to write. How much would Ryan pay him today, to keep it quiet?

He shut the radio off, turned back to writing and counted the dollars in his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Behind the Scenes: The concept that has given me the most hours of entertainment in this fandom is the thought of an ordinary person dealing with the mundane problems of living in any city...against the backdrop of all the weirdness that is Rapture. The juxtaposition of the absurd and the mundane is just...SO GOOD. Those were my absolute favorite parts of this chapter.
> 
> \- Behind the Scenes: ‘The Kidnapping of Iðunn’ is the story referenced by Fálki’s name and my all-time favorite Norse myth. My favorite reading of its symbolism is that Loki, in the form of a falcon, is the part of the human spirit that defies and in some small way, triumphs over death, the eagle who chases it.


	7. Persephone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Devon arrives in Persephone and finds himself with a cellmate who won’t leave him in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- CW: panic attack, psychosis and self harm.

The two of them sat in the back of Gelber’s bathysphere, their wrists still linked by the handcuffs, their hands inches apart on the seat, carefully positioned so as not to touch. Gelber stared out the window, a pensive look on his face. He had barely said a word for the entire ride. Devon watched him closely, his heart pounding every time he raised a hand to scratch himself or shifted in his seat. 

Marston was in the driver’s seat, his back to both of them. He’d refused to look at them since they’d left the movie theater. His attention was focused only on what was in front of him. He was a careful driver - almost too careful. His drove about as slow as the bathysphere could go and slowed to just a notch above a dead stop whenever he turned a corner of any size. Once or twice, Gelber had made some remark about him driving like an old man, which Marston had made no response to. It was as though, for him, there was no one but him in the bathysphere.

They’d been going south for some time now - Devon was sure of it. When his head had stopped spinning long enough to focus, he’d caught glimpses of landmarks he’d seen before, the sights he’d glanced out at every day from the train windows to and from work without a second thought. What else was down here but tenements and the one park he’d never had time to go to? 

His one consolation was that Reykjanes Ridge was in the exact opposite direction.

While he was firmly staring at his feet in an effort not to throw up, one drop of blood escaped from his nose and before he could stop it, splashed on Gelber’s plush seat. His throat grew tight and his heart thundered in his chest. There was a wailing in his head and fresh tears brimming in his eyes and -

Gelber was still staring out the window. He breathed through his mouth, tried to steady himself and with the slowest, least noticeable movement possible, shifted his leg to cover the stain.

They were entering some kind of depot. The tunnel Marston had turned down was unornamented and lit only by several rings of hazard lights. They cast eerie bands of light on the bathysphere floor as they passed under them. In the darkness between, Gelber moved. 

Devon bit back a scream when he lunged over and grabbed his other wrist. His instinct was to kick - to bite, to claw, to scream bloody murder - but who would hear him? How much _worse_ would Gelber hurt him if he even tried to fight back? How much fight did he have left in him anyway? He felt like something had been torn, deep inside him. And his head...he just wished he could see straight.

He squeezed his good eye shut and held still, despite the way his touch made his skin crawl. Something _clicked_ around his other wrist. The other cuff. They were unattached now. He breathed a sigh of relief when Gelber leaned back in his seat, but the trembling his touch had triggered didn’t stop. He looked down at his cuffed hands and if anything, felt even more trapped.

The bathysphere was floating upwards through dark water. Wherever they were going, they’d arrived. His stomach clenched in dread of wherever it was they were.. 

Marston’s steering duties had ended when the suction had taken hold of the bathysphere. He leaned over the dashboard, his head buried in the curl of his arms as the current carried them up.

When the bathysphere surfaced, all he could see through the window was dirty concrete and a person waiting out there whose uniform only differed from that of Ryan Security’s by its lack of silver chains. 

Gelber stepped over him and opened the door. For the briefest of moments, Marston looked. Then he turned away, his eyes firmly fixed on the featureless wall beyond the window in front of him. His reflection looked haggard and downcast. Devon felt an intense surge of loathing towards him, momentarily surpassing even that which he felt towards Gelber. The _audacity_ of him, to be _upset_ after what he’d played a part in. 

“Evening, Tilton.” Gelber said, giving the man out there a lackluster wave, “Got another one for ya.”

“Yeah, yeah.” he answered, stifling a yawn, “Make it snappy, then.”

“Out.” Gelber said, turning to him as he snapped his fingers and pointed out there, into the dim unknown. 

He loomed over him, his face like a sky that was about disgorge buckets of rain. Tilton’s arms were crossed, revealing the gun on his belt. Devon glanced between them and hesitated, trying both to summon the strength to stand up and the courage to get off the stain with Gelber standing so close. 

He cried out when Gelber kicked him in the ankle and almost fell in the pool when he was forced to stumble down the concrete ramp that led to the ugly floor. Tilton gave him a disdainful look, but offered a hand to catch him before he fell. 

For a moment, Gelber stood in the doorway, staring down at him with a look he couldn’t quite place. It had no anger, malice, delight or pity in it. It was just...apathy. A nothingness as deep as the Mariana Trench. 

He closed the door without a word. As the bathysphere sank out of view, Tilton shoved him in the direction of a waiting train.

-

The cool glass of the train window felt good on his burning face.

He closed his one good eye as he leaned on it, shutting out the world racing nauseatingly by outside. His heart was racing too, though he was stiller than a statue. 

The only other people aboard were Tilton and his outfit coordinated buddy, who stood at the back of the car, watching. He could feel his eyes on his back - judging, sneering, leering, just out of sight. His hands tightened around the bar he was chained to only because the feeling of holding on to something solid stopped him from drifting away into the inky blackness swirling around in his head.

He hadn’t dared to ask where they were going. It was as though his voice was locked in his throat - crushed into nothingness beneath the weight that had settled in his chest. They were going where they were going. It didn’t matter anymore.

He could feel the train slowing to a crawl beneath him. The man in back shifted in his seat and Tilton made a strained sound that suggested he was stretching. 

Devon opened his eye to see the facade of an austere gray building speeding toward him, PERSEPHONE spelled out in towering steel letters welded to its front. It was flanked by a pair of angular winged creatures - valkyries was his first thought. Then angels, then Thanatos. There were so many myths of winged creatures flying one away to the afterlife. 

His throat tightened as the train passed into the pitch black tunnel gaping from beneath the letters. The window went just as dark. He sat up straighter, wincing at the twinge of pain the motion caused, as the train screeched to a halt. 

Tilton heaved himself out of his seat with a weary look about him and unhooked Devon from the bar. Cordially, Devon held out his other wrist. He snapped the other cuff on without a word of thanks.

“Go.” Tilton said, hoisting him out of his seat by the collar and giving him a push toward the door.

The door opened with a cheerful _ding_. Outside, there was more dismal looking concrete, illuminated by dim, buzzing lights. When he hesitated, waiting to see if his dizziness would pass before he took another step, Tilton pushed him again. 

He stumbled out into the unknown.

-

Devon lay on a hard metal bench and wondered if this was what it felt like, to be abandoned on a battlefield, his life slowly flagging away behind enemy lines. Everything ached. He couldn’t sit up without getting dizzy. There was a light in the ceiling that pulsed and vibrated whenever he looked at it. He had given up trying to tell if it was in his head or if there was really something wrong with it. When he closed his eye because it had become too much to look at, he lived in terror of not knowing if he’d awaken if he drifted off to sleep.

The one remaining peg by which his sanity hung was the watch on his wrist. He looked at it periodically, drawing comfort from witnessing the passage of time go by in neat, clearly defined units. 

_11:00_

_11:15_

_11:20_

_11:45_

_12:10_

_12:25_

There was no other clock in the grey-walled room. He thought of Einar every time he looked at it and played a game in his head in which he imagined he was here; sitting beside him, watching. Unable to touch or speak but by his mere presence, making it easier to bear. He tried to remember the feel of his old callused hand and whether it had ever touched his forehead to check for a fever. 

No. He had kept to himself whenever he was sick. He wouldn’t have told him about the hurt deep inside or Gelber or...any of it. 

And then Einar would have cuffed his ear when he found out later down the line and yelled “ _Helvítis hálfviti!_ I stay _right here_ all along and you say not a _word_ to me? Come.” 

And then he would have held him like a child.

Devon sniffled. He felt something crack inside him and then slowly, inexorably, it turned into a full blown sob.

-

It had felt like he’d closed his eye for only a moment, but with a start, he realized he’d fallen asleep. The green hands of his watch read _1:05_. Forty minutes, gone, just like that. But he’d woken up again, hadn’t he?

He felt slightly more clear-headed after a nap and a good cry. More substantial. More _real_. His mouth was dry from breathing through it for so long. He closed it, swallowed thickly and with great care, eased himself up to a sitting position. The room spun for a moment, then steadied itself.

He reached up to touch his nose with his handcuffed hands and winced at how tender it was. At the same time he wished that there was a mirror to see by in here, he was glad that there wasn’t. If it looked as bad as it felt, there was a part of him that didn’t want to see. 

But it had been hours since they’d thrown him in here. Hours since he’d heard another human’s voice or seen any indication that there was a world outside this room at all. He couldn’t bring himself to count on help arriving anytime soon. 

Much as his stomach turned at the thought, there was a toilet in the corner where he could wash up. He stumbled toward it and fell to his knees. The cool water felt good on his face. His mouth felt like it was lined with sandpaper and the throbbing gap where his tooth had been still tasted like blood, but drinking from a toilet was exactly one step further than he was willing to go just yet. 

And now the hard part, then.

He squinted at his dim reflection in the water and tried to get a sense of just how bad off his nose was. Feeling it out beneath the swelling, resisting the urge to jerk his hand away all the while - that was a slightly more successful endeavor. It didn’t _feel_ anywhere near as bad as Ken’s had been that day, when Jones had popped him dead-on in the snozz for suggesting that he find a girlfriend that someone else wasn’t already dating. The medic had snapped it back into place like it was nothing, though Ken had taken a wild swing at him the second he’d done it. 

Devon wriggled like a worm to free his wallet from his back pocket. The cuff dug into his wrist as he strained to reach it. When he finally succeeded in prying it free, he stared at it with some trepidation for a moment and then, carefully, bit down on its fake leather outer layer.

With no time for hesitation, he took hold of his nose and wrenched it back into place. 

The resulting stream of garbled obscenities sent a gaggle of armed guards pouring into the room, yelling threats that all blended into one barking order, jabbing their guns at the air surrounding him.

Devon leaned against the wall, both eyes streaming, his heart racing, frantically holding up his empty hands. One of them rushed over and shoved him to the floor, screaming words he couldn’t understand through the pounding in his head. He laid still, not fighting them, the half of his face that wasn’t injured smushed against the cold concrete of the floor until things gradually started to quiet down. With a sniffle, he realized he could breathe through his nose again.

The waiting didn’t last much longer.

-

Fingerprints. Mug shots. A medical exam he hoped to never, ever repeat. It all blurred together into one long bureaucratic fever dream.

But it seemed as though he were finally reaching the end. He was in some kind of changing room, dropping his personal items, one by one, into a canvas bin. A neatly folded jumpsuit, a metal identification bracelet and a pair of flimsy slippers one step above cardboard waited for him on the bench. From the door, a guard watched him with a little too much interest. The man’s eyes were roaming across his skin, looking at where he’d rather not be seen, probing, _invading_ , paying no attention to his obvious discomfort. He was trying his damnedest to change quickly, to get out of this nightmare scenario and into the next but...

He hadn’t realized how hard it would be.

Not entirely in the physical sense - while the room still spun every time he stood up too fast and pulling his undershirt over his head involved painstakingly avoiding his face, he was otherwise hale enough to put on a jumpsuit. It was about the shedding of all the mundane things that were _his_. 

The grease-stained jacket he’d worn to keep out the chill of the smugglers’ bay while he worked. 

That cheap shirt Stan Poole had bought him from the boutique he’d walked into while wearing a bathrobe. 

His tooth-marked wallet, with all the remnants of the fragile life he’d made for himself down here in it.

In the bin. Gone. It was like throwing away pieces of himself. 

He tried not to pass out as he bent down to untie his shoes. The guard was behind him now. He gave him a sideways glance before, blocking his line of vision with his body, he slipped the watch off his wrist and stuffed it into his sock. It made a lump in the side but, if he pretended nothing was there and acted cool, maybe...

The guard tapped his toe impatiently.

He unlaced his shoes and threw them in the bin, one after another. 

Belt.

Pants.

The fabric of the jumpsuit was rough against his skin and too light to offer much protection against the chill that pervaded every room he’d been in. He buttoned it up and stepped into the papery slippers. The bracelet felt like a ring of ice around his wrist. _020910_ , it read. 

He stood up straight and turned around to face the guard. The guard was still standing there, tapping, looking at him as though he expected something. Devon looked at him quizzically.

“The socks.” he said, with curt annoyance, pointing at his feet, “And the watch.”

The chill stole into Devon’s chest cavity. 

He stood there for a moment, frozen, the only motion in the entire world, the tapping of the guard’s toe. 

Then he sat down, took off his shoes, reached into his sock and...looked at it for one last time before letting it slip through his fingers into the bin.

He put his shoes back on. 

The guard stopped his tapping and pulled the handcuffs from his belt.

-

It must have been way after lights out. That much he’d known already, before he’d been cut off from the flow of time.

The cells they passed were dark and still. Some of the occupants stirred as the guard’s flashlight swept over them. The first few times it happened, he saw only shapes shifting in their bunks before darkness fell again. 

And then it passed over a face staring blankly through the bars. It was a canvas of weeping sores and at the place where the nose should have been, there was a rotting hole. Devon drew back with a sharp intake of breath. The face smiled at him, its expression all bleeding gums. And then it was plunged into shadow, gone, as if it had been nothing but a bad dream.

But it wasn’t a dream.

Hands covered in knobbly tumors reached out to grab him as he passed. Someone screamed nonsensically and when the guard turned his flashlight on the cell of the person doing the screaming, Devon saw that its occupant’s sagging skin was held together with what looked like an entire box’s worth of industrial grade staples. 

His chest tightened just a little more with every similar sight he saw. He felt a deep, pulsing shame for being so afraid of them - they were _sick_. They were so obviously _ill_ and in need of medical attention and who was he to say that physical ugliness made a person a monster? But…

But still, he drew away. He kept his eyes on the back of the guard’s legs.

Before he knew it, they’d stopped. 

“Cell D4.” the guard said softly into the radio he’d pulled from his belt, “Please.”

“ _You got it._ ” a fuzzy voice answered.

With a _CLANG_ far too loud for this time of night, the cell door slid open. A groan came from inside. When the guard shone his flashlight in, a figure on a bunk pulled its blanket over its head. The guard looked from one bunk to the other and motioned him in. The other bunk was little more than a concrete slab. Feeling the presence of the bars around him and whatever it was that was lying on that bunk, he stepped in. 

“Give it, Delgado.” the guard said, poking at the swaddled lump with his baton, “You’ve got a new pal. Sleeping Beauty needs his four poster bed.”

The lump tossed the blanket aside with a huff, rolled over and - 

It was a completely normal looking man. A normal man with a bad bedhead and a bit of a paunch, no different than any other middle aged man he’d seen on the street. 

He sat up and yawned, showing off a mouth of healthy teeth. Then, with an unintelligible grumble, rose to his feet and tugged the mattress pad off his bed, bringing down the blanket with it. There was another pad just like it beneath. He kicked the blanket off, rolled up the extra pad and walking from one end of the cell to the other like a sleepwalker, dumped it on the other bunk. 

The guard gestured for Devon to come closer. He undid his handcuffs, then stepped out and radioed a message to whoever it was he’d spoken to before. When the cell door _CLANGED_ shut again, he and his flashlight left, plunging the two of them into darkness.

He could hear his cellmate settling back down on the other end of the cell, someone moaning in the distance, the fading sound of the guard’s footsteps, the faint buzz of the exit sign just beyond reach. It illuminated the hall with a faint red light that didn’t quite reach into the cell itself.

He smoothed out his mattress pad by touch, laid down and shivered. Whatever body heat it had held was already gone.

He didn’t sleep that night, of course.

-

The man the guard had called Delgado was watching him intently as he gingerly tugged out the strips of bloody fabric he’d shoved up his nose last night to hold it in place. His face was screwed up in deep thought and his eyes had gone squinty. Devon felt like a bug under a microscope. He wished he’d look someplace else.

 _As though there’s anything else to look at around here,_ some snide part of his brain responded. 

In the fluorescent morning light, all he could see through the bars were ordinary people in cells that were carbon copies of his. Some of them peered out across the hall, watching him just as interestedly as Delgado. It was slightly easier to ignore them.

The water from the sink had a brownish tinge and tasted of iron, but he was too thirsty by now not to drink it. He stuck his mouth under the faucet, splashed his face and rinsed out his bloody fabric strips as best he could. When he could find no signs of a towel, he dried off on his sleeve. There was no mirror in here either. And the light at the back of the cell was too dim to get a good reflection in the toilet. 

While he was standing there frowning at the toilet, there was a rustle of paper behind him. Delgado tapped him on the shoulder. His heart sank when he turned around.

A yellowed image of his own smiling face was looking back at him from the front page of the Rapture Tribune. 

“Is this you?” he asked, jabbing a thumb at the picture.

He pursed his lips and turned back to the toilet.

-

It was easier to sleep through most days.

There was no one he needed to talk to. Nothing he needed to do. No decisions he needed to make. It was freeing, in a way, to have responsibility for nothing and no one. To be a void into which nothing went in or out. 

Who were they? What did it matter? What _does_ anything matter?

Delgado was the one person who bothered him.

He was a chatterbox. He talked nonstop the second he set foot in the cell, about anything and everything that popped into his raving skull. Gossip about people he knew nothing about. How he’d successfully shaved around someone’s head tumor without nicking it. The biggest stain he’d seen in the laundry that day and speculation about where it’d come from. Some kind of deep sea horror that had swum past the cafeteria window.

Devon had learned to tune it out fairly fast. It was just background noise now. Like the distant moans and screams and the popping of the electronic locks on the cell doors when it was time for morning count. 

Delgado was touching him again.

He jerked away, opened his eyes and shot him a withering glare. 

“Hey!” he said, smiling, not even reeling a _little_ under the force of the glare, “Lookit! I smuggled a dinner roll out for you.”

He was holding out a crushed object that could, with generosity, be called bread. 

Devon rolled over to face the wall. Smooth grey bricks, each the same shape and size. No surprises behind them. No pretensions of being anything else.

“Look…I...” Delgado said, a tinge of desperation creeping into his voice, “I don’t want to scare you or nothing but...if you don’t eat _something_ soon, they’re going to start with the force feeding. And…”

He sighed.

“I’ll...uh...I’ll leave it here. For when you’re ready.”

Devon closed his eyes.

-

“Yo! Topside!”

Devon groaned in his sleep, the name piercing the dream he was in like a red-hot dart. As he was pulled back to consciousness, he realized that he was lying on the wrong side to glare at him. It was so much effort to roll over. Too much. He closed his eyes and tried to go back where he’d been. It hadn’t been a good dream, but at least it hadn’t been a bad one.

When he failed to respond after a few seconds, he heard the squeak of Delgado’s shoes drawing closer and all of a sudden his hands were _touching him_ , _shaking him_ back awake. He suppressed the instinct to claw his eyes out and instead curled up in a harder to shake ball.

“Murphy and Mattson’ve got EVE!” he yelled breathlessly. Too loud, for the closeness of the walls. “They’re gonna _rumble_! If we don’t move fast”-

“Who the hell is Eve?” he croaked, jabbing an elbow in what he assumed was Delgado’s general vicinity. It didn’t connect with anything.

The shaking stopped. For a moment, he relaxed again. 

“ _W-Who…_ ” Delgado sputtered, “ _Who_ is...who...is _Eve_...that’s _it_.”

Devon’s eyes snapped open at the venom in his tone.

“ _That’s it._ ” he repeated, “I’ve tried and I’ve _tried_ to get _through_ to you, but _that_...that’s where I draw the line. I’m sorry, but...”

He laughed coldly, curtly. Devon felt his hands lift the edge of the mattress pad.

“I’m _done_ being cordial. Get it? And you? _You_...are getting out of this bed...right...NOW.”

He went crashing to the floor as Delgado yanked the mattress out from under him.

“ _The fuck is wrong with you?_ ” Devon screamed, his voice hoarse from disuse, holding the part of his head that had banged the bunk on the way down.

“ _The fuck is wrong with me!_ ” Delgado bellowed, his face turning as red as the exit sign, “ _No!_ The fuck is wrong with _you_? You’re lying in this fucking _bed_ for fucking _days_ and now there’s two goddamn _muchachos_ about to start winging _bees_ at one another and _you...don’t want...to see_.”

Slowly, Devon let go of his head and sat up.

“Bees.” he repeated.

Delgado’s stormy visage turned into one beaming with childish glee.

“ _Bees!_ ” he echoed, flapping his arms like wings for a couple of beats, “C’mon, now. Bees wait for no man!”

He extended a hand. Devon regarded it with caution for a moment and then heaved himself to his feet on his own. Delgado’s hurt expression turned into one of worry as the room spun and he felt gravity tugging him back to the floor. 

He pushed away the hand Delgado had caught him with the second he was steady enough to stand on his own.

-

Delgado was leading him around by the sleeve. He wasn’t entirely sure when it had happened. He’d just looked down at one point and seen his hand gripping the too-loose fabric without actually touching him. He could break away easily enough if he wanted, but, as they plunged into the shouting, shoving crowd at the other end of the block, it was good to have some way of staying together. It wasn’t as though he were going to get lost without him, but there was no way he was getting through the crowd without Delgado pushing on ahead.

The yelling got louder and the shoving, more frantic, as they went. 

“FIFTY ON MURPHY BEATING THE SNITCH’S ASS!” a man next to him screeched directly in his ear. 

“TWENTY ON THE SNITCH GOING FOR THE JUGULAR!” went one at the same volume from the other side.

Above his head, there was a sea of hands waving bills in the air.

“PINO!” Delgado shrieked over the ruckus, shaking his own wad of bills as high as he could stretch, “EY _PINO!_ ” 

He could see him now, up ahead - a harried bookie, taking bets from all sides, cramming what looked like a bedpan full with the proffered money. 

“TWENTY DOLLARS ON WEIR KNOCKING BOTH THEIR HEADS TOGETHER!” Delgado screamed, still trying to get his attention, “ _PINO!_ ”

He noticed them only when they were right in front of him. 

“BAD IDEA.” he yelled back, “WEIR’S ONLY JUST CLOCKED IN.”

“I’M FEELING LUCKY!” Delgado answered, tugging on Devon’s sleeve, “I GOT _HIM_ OUT TODAY.”

Pino made a face that suggested that he’d scoffed and held out his hand for the money. The thought occurred to Devon that using him as a good luck charm probably wasn’t for the best. But it wasn’t as though he were going to tell _him_ that.

After a great deal of shoving and argument that he thought was going to break out into another fight, they were at the front of the pack, against the railing that looked down on the lower level. Delgado looked proud of himself.

“BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE.” he yelled, grinning. 

It was replaced by a look of surprise when Devon jerked his sleeve out of his grasp and abruptly stepped back. He hadn’t even thought about it. It just _happened_. Is that what he was doing now? Just _reacting_ to everyday phrases that nobody means anything by? Out of all the stupid things to set his heart pounding and palms sweating...

For a moment Delgado stood there, his hand holding empty air, his mouth a perfect O. Then he smiled gently, as though nothing had happened and used his empty hand to point at the combatants down below.

“THAT’S MATTSON.” he yelled, gesturing at the doughy-faced one, “AND THAT’S MURPHY.”

The other one was almost as squirrely as Stan. 

“MATTSON’S THE SNITCH. OR SO THEY SAY.”

He shrugged and turned back to the action.

There didn’t appear to be a woman named Eve down there with them. Vaguely, now that he was more awake, he recalled that Eve had something to do with ADAM. That, he knew slightly more than nothing about, at the very least, what with the ads posted on every street corner and blared over the intercom into the brains of every passing stranger.

Below, the two men circled each other threateningly, hemmed in by a ring of cheering onlookers. They didn’t appear to have any weapons on them, nor were they close enough to come to blows. But the way they were holding their hands was strange - they were pointing them at one another like loaded guns.

All of a sudden there was a sound like a clap thunder and the doughy-faced one - who also looked like he had some sort of skin condition - went flying back into the crowd behind him. There was a roar of approval from, presumably, the half that had not bet on him as the victor. 

But he wasn’t out yet. The ones he assumed were on his side pushed him back into the ring, yelling encouragement and threats in equal measure. The thunder sounded again, but this time he dodged, flung out his hand like he was throwing something and - 

A thick swarm of what had to be _insects_ were dispersed into the crowd below, causing them to scatter like leaves in the wind. The one whose hand they’d exploded from was caught in the thick of it, frantically trying to slap them away.

Delgado was laughing insanely, smacking the railing as he did so. 

“ _¡Ay Dios mio_!” he yelled, leaning close to his ear, “Not every one’s a winner, is it?”

An insect flew up from below. It was, undoubtedly, a bee. A bee that looked like any other bee he’d seen on the surface but...there was a _wrongness_ about it. The impossibility of its origin clashed with its reality. He backed away before it could get too close.

The one with the thunder in his hands had the bee summoner in a headlock, seeming to care little about the swarm that was consuming them both. 

“Well…” Delgado said, wiping the tears from his eyes once the panic had died down, “Guess that’s the show. See, now wasn’t that”-

He was interrupted by the sound of shouting from down the hall and the pound of booted feet on the floor. A trio of guards fought their way through the remainder of the crowd below to come to a screeching halt just beyond the cloud of bees. They stood there, looking as though they hadn’t the faintest clue how to handle this. The image of law enforcement officers on the surface trying to deal with this in, with all probability, the exact same way, stole into Devon’s mind and despite himself, he smiled. 

“66402 _8!_ ” a fourth figure bellowed, his voice rising abruptly on the last syllable. He pushed through the trio of paralyzed guards, his baton at the ready.

Delgado had frozen mid-laugh. His eyes were bright with anticipation and glued on the scene below.

“YOU _WILL_ CEASE AND DESIST.” the man bellowed, plunging headlong into the swarming bees and cracking his baton across the head of the one who refused to loosen the headlock. Murphy cried out as he fell to his knees. Mattson dropped out of his loosening grip, gasping for air.

“AND _YOU._ ” he went on, hoisting up Mattson by the collar before he had a chance to catch his breath, “WITH ME. _NOW._ ”

Murphy - springing from the floor - made a grab for the gun on the man’s belt but before he could make it, he was rewarded with a sharp kick in the stomach. He fell back down to the floor, gasping and was abruptly seized by his collar too. 

The entire block held its breath as he dragged both of their groaning bodies down the hall. People were hurling themselves out of the way to let them through, the fear they had of this man forming an impenetrable, invisible bubble around him. 

The second the door slammed behind them, Delgado let out an earsplitting whoop and pushed his way back into the crowd yelling “PINO! _PINO_ , YOU SAW THAT! _PAY UP_! PINO!”

Devon felt sick. He stood there for a while longer, hanging on to the railing for dear life, not entirely sure of what would happen if he dared let go.

-

Plasmids.

He knew what they were, on a basic level. It was hard not to, living here, hearing about them at least once per train ride. He had the vaguest understanding of ADAM, of gene splicing, of the impossible things these people had cooked up, out from under the eye of the FDA. He also had the sneaking suspicion that he should probably be more impressed than he was with the whole thing.

But it just wasn’t something that had ever entered directly into his wheelhouse. None of the people he’d interacted with on a daily basis had been obvious users. He’d never once felt inclined to walk into the discount gene clinic down the street. It had taken him months to stop jumping every time he saw someone light up with a snap of their fingers, but after that, it was all background noise. 

It had been unimportant to the mission, so he’d blocked it out. A thought for a day when he had the brainspace to devote to it. 

So, today was the day, then.

-

He had no idea how Delgado had talked him into this. One minute they were waiting for lockdown to be over and the next, he was stuffing a canvas bag down the front of his jumpsuit and rushing him out the door by the sleeve. Not that Devon had protested. He’d already been pulled out of his inertia once today. Keeping the ball rolling felt a touch easier than stopping it in its tracks. So Delgado just kept dragging him along by the sleeve, jabbering away as was his wont.

“So, most of us here...we’re product testers for the big lab upstairs - Fontaine Futuristics. You’ve...been here long enough to hear about them, right?”

Devon gave him a blank look when he turned around to look at him.

“Yeah, probably.” he muttered, turning back around, “Plasmids, gene tonics - whatever it is, it goes through us first. That’s how the Big Man turns a profit - renting us out. Pays us too. But...nowhere near as much as they pay _him_ , I’m sure. Heeeeey, Knuckles!”

He paused to wave at a guy with a limp who was going in the opposite direction. The guy waved back.

“Getting a little long in back, aren’t you?” Delgado asked him, gesturing vaguely at his hair, “Been a while since I’ve seen you in my chair.”

The guy stopped, dead in his tracks.

“Wait...they let you have a _chair_ now?”

Delgado hemmed and hawed.

“It’s a...a _metaphorical_ chair! Not quite as good as a real one, but...y’know.”

He shrugged. The guy laughed, shaking his head as he went on his way.

“I’m free Tuesday!” Delgado yelled after him. “Now, where was I?”

He made a face, trying to remember. Truthfully, Devon had forgotten too.

“Ah!” he said, sticking a finger in the air when he got it, “Now _sometimes_...you come out of the tests with a thicker head of hair”-

He pointed to his own hair and grinned.

-“or the ability to fart roses on command. But other times…”

He stopped talking when a man with a crusty tumor sticking out of his temple walked by. Everyone else made a wide berth around him as he passed too. When he was gone, he continued, with a lower voice.

“It gets ugly. There’s...side effects they don’t want the folks in the Penthouse knowing about. Ones they need to iron out on us, before going public with the things. That’s how you get… _that_. Or a swarm of bees that stings the hand what feeds it. Do you...get it?”

He glanced back at Devon, his forehead wrinkling as he waited for a reply.

“Great.” he said with the same cheerfulness he might have mustered if any answer had been forthcoming, “Now that there’s the art room. And the infirmary’s down that way…”

-

“What’re you up for? Steak? Burger and fries? Ooh, they’ve got milkshakes now. That’s new. Pick out whatever you want. Papa’s flush with cash!”

Delgado flipped over the menu excitedly to pore over the back. They were sitting on the hard metal bench of a cafeteria table. Before he’d opened the menu, Devon had glimpsed “Sinclair’s Deluxe Meals”, stamped on the front in a swirly cursive that seemed at odds with every other design element he’d seen in the place. 

Not that he’d be ordering anything off of it. He leaned back in his seat and stared out the window that deep sea horror had probably swum in front of. There was nothing out there now but murky water illuminated by some kind of silvery light. A spotlight? It didn’t move quite right for that. 

“Ehhh, I don’t recommend the fish.” Delgado rambled on, flipping the menu back over, “I mean, it’s _better_ fish than the slop they call food around here, but...it don’t change the fact that you get fish every other damn day here, on the house. Cheapskates. Serving the shit that gets caught in the filters! Just put it back in the ocean, I say. Make a lot o’ bottom feeders happy.”

He stopped for a second to look at Devon. His smile slipped, just for a moment.

“Y’know what?” he said, snapping the menu shut, “Dessert before dinner! How’s that sound?”

Without waiting for an answer, he was up and gone. 

Devon put his head down on the table and closed his eyes. It was cold in here. Colder than it had been, back in his cell, though the cell had been growing colder too, as of late. Or maybe he’d just lost too much body fat to keep warm. 

He could feel the eyes of other inmates on him. Sizing him up. Probing for weak spots. He felt like a walking target out here, among so many strangers. And if he had defend himself...

“Lookie _here_!” Delgado said, his voice loudly jerking him out of his doze.

He had two plates in hand. 

“Real cherries from Arcadia! Connor said he saw them come in. Bet he got to taste ‘em for _free_ , the lucky bastard. Man’s a shit cook, but he makes a mean pie. Dunno how _that_ works out.”

He slid into his seat and set one of the plates down in front of Devon. It really did look like an excellent slice of pie. The crust was perfectly browned and the glistening filling oozed out, just a little, onto the plate.

He felt queasy looking at it. Queasy under Delgado’s expectant gaze as he watched, his fork hovering over his own slice. 

“Please?” he whispered, “For me?”

Devon pushed it an inch away.

“What do you want for it?” he asked softly.

“ _Want?_ Wha…?”

He looked him icily in the eye.

“ _Nothing_ in Rapture is free. What do you _want_? Say it. Out loud. So I _know_.”

Delgado looked stung.

“Nothing!” he said, waving his hands in the air, “Not a _thing_. Except...except for maybe not seeing armed guards shove a tube down my celly’s nose. How’s that?”

Devon glared at him.

Delgado made a frustrated sound in his throat.

“Really...I...do I _need_ to have some kind of ulterior motive here? Can’t I just...share a pie with a friend? Is that a _crime_?”

“We’re not friends.”

Delgado winced. Devon felt the tiniest tinge of remorse. He really did look hurt by that. 

“Look” Delgado said, leaning closer and lowering his voice, “Maybe it’s like that up in the Penthouse. Maybe...it _is_ a crime to hand a homeless man a buck. Maybe they _do_ sound the alarms if you give away something for nothing, but here… _here_ , it’s our world and we don’t have to abide by _their_ rules.”

He nudged the plate back towards him.

Devon’s stomach gurgled. He swore he could feel it squirming against his ribs, straining like a living creature inside of him. He thought he’d passed the point of hunger days ago. He’d ceased to have an appetite, to have a driving need for any type of nourishment at all. But now, seeing something so appealing, right in front of him - he realized he was _starving_ , ravenous for the tiniest taste of it. But…

Not from _him._

Not from anyone who expected him to take on a debt he couldn’t pay back.

He realized his hands were shaking again.

“I _can’t_.” he whispered, sticking his hands into his elbows and making himself small, “You _have_ to understand that I _ca_ ”-

A hand slammed down on the table. Devon jumped.

“Well lookie here!” an inmate with white, perfect teeth and a face that was so symmetrical, it was frightening, said, leering, “The matchstick shows his face! Oooh, it’s an ugly one.”

The two inmates who appeared to be his lackeys chuckled mindlessly behind him. 

“What’d you do?” he went on, looming over him, “Get it caught in the train door? Or were you just born like”-

“Want a haircut, Alves?”

Both of them did a double take when Delgado spoke. Delgado looked right back at him, his arms crossed, not the faintest hint of nonsense in his expression.

“What…” Alves said, standing up a straighter as he composed himself, “What did you say to me?”

“A _hair-cut_.” Delgado said, enunciating, “Getting a little long, isn’t it? And those sideburns are getting out of control. You don’t want to cover up those Steinman cheek bones, do you? No, no, no. Terrible waste of surgery, that.”

Alves’ eyes narrowed.

“What are you getting a”-

“But!” Delgado cut him off, with a mischievous grin, “There’s that weird lump on your head that spoils the effect, right? Such a nuisance! Be a terrible shame if you didn’t have the only professional barber in the compound to work it out for you, wouldn’t it? Be a _real shame_ if you had to resort to Keene’s clippers and a murder one.”

Devon realized that the room had gone silent. Someone chortled at Delgado’s speech and was quickly shushed. Alves’ eyes darted to the direction from which it had come and then darted back. 

Delgado clucked his tongue and shook his head.

“C’mon, Alves. It’s not worth it.”

Alves gave him an icy glare and stalked away.

Delgado breathed out when he was gone. Slowly, the chatter that had filled the room resumed.

“Woo.” he said, mopping his forehead with a napkin, “Let’s hope he revenges himself on me instead of you, eh? If not, well…”

He made a face as he shrugged.

“It beats going down alone, don’t it? Now c’mon. _One_ slice of pie and I get off your case. Promise.”

Devon smiled at him.

The pie was exactly as good as it looked.

-

“ _Ooooooh!_ ” Delgado squeaked in a high pitched voice after Alves and company had eaten their food and stormed out of the cafeteria, “Mr. High-and-Mighty thinks he’s so much _better_ than us mere mortals ‘cuz _he_ gets to see outside half an hour a week and play at being something he ain’t.”

He popped the last bite of pie in his mouth. 

“Gets in his head, I think. I swear the asshole forgets he’s an inmate like all the rest of”-

“Outside?” Devon asked, sticking his fork through the last cherry.

Delgado’s eyes widened. 

“He _speaks_!” he said, pointing at him with a trembling finger, “My God, I thought I’d be talking to myself for another hour.”

Devon rolled his eyes.

“You’ve _heard_ me speak. C’mon.”

Delgado chuckled.

“Just joshing you. But that’s what? The fiftieth word I’ve heard out of you? Keep going and you’ll make it to a hundred.”

“Har har. Does that count?”

“One, two, three…” he counted, tapping his fork on the table with every number, “ _Fifty-five_!”

“How does he get _outside_?”

“Sixty! Eh...it’s...the Plasmid Theater. They put on shows in there. Upstairs.”

Devon gave him a quizzical look.

“That’s what we call Fontaine Futuristics.” he added quickly, “Upstairs. Down here is Basement-level. The women’s wing is Sub-basement. The parts of the city where nice people live without the burden of knowing about _us_ is Penthouse. Anyway…”

He set his fork down on the plate and pushed it away.

“They do the shows to…’show off the power of the gods!’ And...sell it to the masses, I _think_. Heck if I know more than hearsay. ‘pparently it pays well. But euuuugh.”

He shivered.

“It’s just not worth it. You don’t wanna _know_ how many people I’ve seen come back here in pieces after a stint up there. They sure don’t last long in that job.”

Devon grunted disappointingly. Delgado’s expression darkened.

“‘Cept for that _matón_. Ha. Where else but Rapture is a goddamn theatre kid gonna climb his way to the top of the pecking order? He _juggles_ , man. Hell if I’m going to let myself be talked down to by a _juggler._ ”

Devon laughed, almost inaudibly under his breath. He’d said the word ‘juggler’ with such derision.

Delgado looked at him for a moment and then smiled.

“Say, d’you want anything more than pie?” he asked, “I’ve got money to spare. Anything you want! No strings. Pinky swear. Not that...grown men need to go about pinky swearing in public.”

Devon smiled back at him.

“Oatmeal?” he asked.

“Ha!” Delgado shouted, “Sixty-one!”

-

“Now, these…” Delgado said, stopping the second half of the tour to jab his thumb at the doorway behind him, “are the pay johns. The Big Man squeezes a little more sponduli out of you iffn’ you want privacy while you piss or...other things.”

He made a face.

“Word to the wise” he said, lowering his voice and leaning in close, “Nobody goes in there for the toilets. _Nobody_. At least...not as God intended. So’s you know. Try not to get put on cleaning detail for them.”

He winked exaggeratedly.

“Uhm- _hm_.” Devon said.

“And these” he went on at full volume, a little further down the hall, “are the showers. You stink. Get in.”

“Wha”-

He tried to shoo him in with a flapping hand. Devon stood in the doorway, the tiled room yawning like an open chasm before him. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t make himself step in there. 

“You can’t stink here.” Delgado said gently, stopping himself just before he was going to rest a hand on his shoulder, “You’ve noticed we’re in close quarters, yeah? You stink, you piss people off who can’t go anywhere else to _avoid_ the stink. You piss people off, it gets worse for you. Because of the stink. Look…”

He hadn’t showered since he’d gotten here. He _felt_ disgusting and greasy and ashamed to be in the presence of other humans, but...the thought of stepping over that threshold sent sirens going off in his head. Trembling, he shook his head.

Delgado popped the top button of his collar and pulled out the bag he’d stowed in his jumpsuit. 

“Brought my bathing kit.” he said, holding it out, “You can borrow it until you get your own stuff from commissary. See? And if you’re feeling squeamish, near-nobody comes in here this time of day, so you’ve got a little privacy if you move fast enough. And...uh, if you _want_ , I’ll loiter out in front ‘til it’s my turn. Scare off anyone else who wants in.”

He smiled nervously. That hint of worry that he’d been suppressing all day was in full bloom in his eyes.

He was right, of course. It wasn’t healthy, going God knows how many days without showering. If he tried to think of it in a purely practical sense, then maybe…

“Okay.” he said softly, taking the bag and cradling it in his arms. 

Delgado beamed.

Devon took a deep breath and stepped inside.

“Wait!” Delgado blurted out.

Devon jumped like he’d been shocked.

“Sorry! It’s just, before I forget...” he said, pointing at the bag, “The flip-flops in there are shower shoes. Whatever you do, don’t go barefoot in there.”

He shivered.

“Trust me. We’ll get you some too.”

-

Devon sat outside, his back to the wall, his head on his knees. He felt drained, as though he’d done something more difficult than lather himself up and get out as quickly as possible.

The tap squeaked as Delgado turned it on and a cloud of steam drifted out into the hallway. The sound of falling water filled the air.

Drained, but peaceful. It was like the tired accomplishment he felt after a day of hard but good work. He felt like sleeping now - but not because sleeping was preferable to waking. It was because he wanted to wake up refreshed. 

He glanced up at the sound of Delgado’s footsteps. The water was still running inside. 

“Whoops.” Delgado said, bending down to pick up the bag he’d left on the floor, “Can’t believe I forgot that.”

Water dripped from his damp hair. Around his waist was an off-white towel. 

And peeking just over the top of that was a swollen red tumor that looked as though it wrapped around his entire abdomen.

Devon stared. He couldn’t tear his eyes away, no matter how rude he felt. Looking uncomfortable, Delgado tugged the towel up a little higher and stole back inside.

Devon buried his face back in his knees.

-

“I’m sorry.” Delgado whispered, right under the NO TALKING sign in the security checkpoint they were slowly working their way through, “I should’ve warned you. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Oh no, no.” Devon sputtered, quietly, “I’m the one who’s sorry. I thought...I…”

“That I was normal?” Delgado finished, with a wry smile, “Subjective term down here.”

They zipped their lips as they drew closer to the guard in the booth.

“Tested a weight loss tonic on me once.” he continued, after they’d made it through, “They always hit me up with the beauty products. I dunno _why_. Maybe they think I’m ugly enough to merit it? Ugh...”

With a distant look in his eye, he rested a hand on his stomach. 

“That one worked. ‘Til it grew back. And yet, I’m still a Square to them.”

“A...Square?” Devon asked, hurrying to keep up with him.

Delgado put a finger to his lips and then pointed it in the direction of their cell. When they were safely inside and settled on their beds, he continued.

“I haven’t grown an extra appendage. My face isn’t covered in weeping sores. I don’t walk funny because one foot’s outgrown its shoe. I can throw on a shirt and most folks can’t guess what’s under it. I’ve...uh...I’ve had friends who weren’t so lucky.”

He looked up, seeming about as comfortable as he’d been when he’d peeked out of the shower.

“Squares are the ones who look normal enough to take a hike through the Penthouse without making the masses cry wolf. That’s you and me. That’s every matchstick coming in.”

“That...man in the cafeteria said that too. What”-

“A newcomer who’s never spliced before. Who’s not been burnt up yet. A matchstick.”

“Ah.”

“I’m...assuming you haven’t spliced before?”

“No.”

“Good. It’s nasty stuff.”

He stowed his bathing kit in its spot at the foot of his bed. His side of the cell was exceedingly organized. Even the pile of backdated newspapers was neatly stacked, the edges all facing the same way. 

“Anyhow,” he went on, “Say you get a bad splice upstairs. Your skin starts sloughing off. Or you get a bump growing out of the side of your head. Something that can’t easily be hid. Something that makes the Squares hate you ‘cuz they scry their own future in it. You’re Splicy now. One of the baduns. A Block and some of B - that’s where you go when they decide you’re one of _them_. They try to keep ‘em separate from the Squares. Different blocks, different mealtimes, different times in the dayroom - but, well, there’s only so separate you can be down here, right?

“Now, conventional wisdom says that the worse someone’s spliced, the more dangerous they are. And that’s true - for _some_ of them. Near everyone’s a chronic over there and high on more juice than most of us can shake a stick at. Uh…”

Devon was giving him the face he made whenever he said something incomprehensible. 

“I forgot.” Delgado said, his eyes widening as whatever he’d forgotten came back to him, “They don’t tell you about ADAM up there, do they? They don’t _know_.”

“Know...what?” Devon asked, redirecting the tingle of fear he felt at the tone of his voice into toying mindlessly with the fraying edge of his mattress pad. 

Delgado was silent for a long moment, a distant look in his eyes.

“With ADAM, it’s like…” he answered at last, staring into the space right above his right shoulder rather than making eye contact, “You get a taste of it, you want more. It’s such a small thing at first, like...hankering for a chocolate bar. It tastes good while it’s melting in your mouth. You get some and for just a moment you forget about the greyness of the blocks. About the assholes who put you in ‘em. But…”

He shook his head.

“Then it’s gone and you’ve got an empty wrapper in your hands and nothing to show for it. Or maybe you _do_ have something to show for it, but it’s the thing that gets you cut off from your friends and lumped in with the people you’ve been calling monsters for months. Starts looking real friendly, that chocolate bar. You keep going back to the shop for more, except they pay _you_ for eatin’ ‘em, so you’ve got all the more reason to keep on munching away and all the while...it’s turning you into something you’re not and you can’t bring yourself to give more than the smallest shit about it. That’s when you’ve gone chronic. Not _all_ Splicys are chronic, but well...you can see how easy it is. For them to...let go.”

He stopped looking into the distance and focused intently on him. A thread came loose in Devon’s fingers.

“It plays tricks on your mind, the ADAM...this place. That’s what every last part of it was _built_ to do. Saying ‘no’ to that chocolate bar...it’s like walking uphill with a gale force wind blowing in the opposite direction. And the hill’s made of mud and it’s hurricane season and the sky’s dumping buckets on your head and ah...you get the idea.

“So...we Squares keep away from them. We look away when they pass. Or trip ‘em up if we want some fun. Being neighborly? Inadvisable, if you’re not aiming to be a cast-off yourself. So be careful who you’re friendly with. Who you’re _seen_ being friendly with, more like. Does...any of that make sense?”

Devon stared at him for a moment and then nodded slowly.

Delgado smiled.

“Ha. Maybe you could explain it to me, then. Not much in these walls that makes sense. So...”

He bunched his blanket into a pad to sit on and leaned back against the wall, making himself comfortable despite the complete lack of any chair, easy or otherwise.

“I’ve been talking your ear off all day and you’re on what? Word eighty? I don’t even know what your _name_ is. C’mon. You’ve gotta give me _something_ to work with before lights out.”

“It’s…” Devon answered, a worm of uncertainty wriggling in his stomach, “Not Topside.”

“ _No!_ Really?” Delgado said, putting his hand to his mouth in mock horror.

“It’s Devon.”

It felt strange to say it out loud, after all this time. Voids don’t have names.

Delgado hopped out of bed and held out his hand.

“Renato Armando Delgado y Álvarez the third, Esquire.”

He chuckled at Devon’s raised eyebrow.

“That was a joke. The...last bit, anyway. Sounded funnier in my head.”

“I...didn’t think you were a lawyer.”

“Oh, not even close.”

Devon looked at his extended hand. He considered for a moment and then...shook on it.

“Pleased to meet you.” Delgado said.

“Likewise.” Devon answered, smiling back.

-

When Delgado wasn’t traveling from cell to cell with his barbering bag, he spent the majority of his time working in the laundry room. He had used some kind of leverage to get Devon a job in there too.

It was hard, sweaty, filthy work and the chemicals gave him a rash that he just couldn’t shake. But it brought in enough money to cover the absolute bare essentials, kept him in the same room as Delgado for most of the day and was one of the few places where the workers were allowed to talk freely on the job, even if it was shouting over the rumble of the washing machines. 

He made a few acquaintances there, some of whom plainly had an idea of who he was but never once brought it up. He thought Delgado must have said something and if he had, was immensely glad of it. News moved slower down here. The newspapers they got were a week out of date, at the very best. Things that had happened a month ago were still fresh here, at the bottom of the world. Thus, his celebrity status wasn’t so far in the past as it had been when he was free and that, he found, had made him something of a target. 

But there was safety in numbers, in putting his head down and blending in among the mounds of towels, napkins, clothes and bedding that circulated through the facility. When he was part of something bigger than himself, he was harder to hurt.

While he couldn’t have called himself happy, there was a kind of peace in the monotony of the laundry room. In the steam and the heat and with the sense of camaraderie, he could, for a moment, almost believe he was working in the belly of a destroyer, trying to keep her afloat as planes whizzed by overhead. 

For at least several hours a day, it kept him distracted from the thoughts that bubbled up from the black depths of his brain and lost in the motions of the work.

And then his shift ended.

-

Connor put an ice cream scoop of _something_ on his lunch tray. It smelled fishy and was a pale shade of grey. There was a sharp looking piece of rib bone sticking out of one of its sides. Beyond that, it had no identifying characteristics whatsoever. Connor stared at him blankly, revealing nothing.

Devon moved on down the line. There were also overboiled vegetables that had taken on a greyish sheen and what _might_ have possibly been mashed potatoes. He wished he could afford a hamburger. He could still taste it, the one that Delgado had bought with the last of his gambling winnings. It wasn’t happening on a laundryman’s wage. If he wanted that, he’d have to volunteer Upstairs and _that_ was a thing he was determined not to do.

 _So you tell yourself,_ a wicked little voice whispered in his ear, _Just you wait until you need to remember what chocolate tastes like so badly you’ll do anything to get your hands on a piece._

He shushed it hurriedly and stepped away from the serving line.

Delgado waved at him from a table at which sat a handful of their laundry buddies. Devon waved back, flashed a smile and began making his way over there. 

The cafeteria wasn’t a large room, but it _was_ crowded at this time of day, with all the stragglers trying to get some chow before the Splicys came in. He worked his way toward them slowly, deliberately, being careful not to step on anyone’s toes. Manners were important in here. Small disagreements were things that went ricocheting off the walls and back on the people who’d loosed them with ten times the strength. There was nowhere else for them to go, in a facility anchored over an abyss.

He was nearly there and focusing intently on his destination when his feet flew out from under him. A chorus of “ _Oooooooohs!_ ” rose up from the people who’d seen him go down. He felt that fish paste soaking into the front of his jumpsuit and despaired at the thought of taking a second shower so as not to offend people with the smell. Dammit. He’d be late to the laundry room again. Too many lates and he was out. 

When he pulled himself up off the floor, he saw what he’d slipped on.

It was a patch of ice, just sitting there, apropos of nothing. For a second, he couldn’t comprehend its existence. The climate control system was bad at keeping the chill of the ocean out but it wasn’t quite that bad, was it?

Oh no, he _knew_ what this was.

His eyes followed the trajectory of the ice to see Alves, leaning casually against the wall, rolling an icicle between his fingers.

His frozen, blueish fingers with bloody shards of ice sprouting from the knuckles.

He was smiling at him, his perfect teeth like tombstones.

The room had gone silent. He could feel the prickle of many eyes on him. 

It was Delgado he’d gotten last time. He’d twisted an ankle when he slipped and was stuck in the cell for days before he could walk again. Alves had, of course, denied all culpability. He hadn’t even been in the room when it happened. How could he have known that Delgado was going to come the way he came every day at the exact same time? It plainly wasn’t him, so he’d best keep cutting his hair.

So it’d been going for them. Small, easily denied pranks that were slowly escalating into something worse.

And now he was challenging him directly, in front of a crowd of witnesses. That was certainly worse.

If he did nothing - if he dusted himself off and walked away like the slip had been his own fault - there was no doubt in his mind that it would _keep_ happening. There’d be so many patches of ice on the floor that he’d constantly be looking down. There’d be icicles wherever and whenever either of them tried to sit. Maybe one day he’d start deep-freezing parts of their bodies and watch the frostbite erode them away. And so it would be until him, or they, died.

It had gone on too long already. He wished he’d had the strength to lay down the rules right off the bat, that first day he’d left the cell. Now, there was only one other way to end it for good.

He stood up and kicked the fallen tray out of the way. Alves waggled his eyebrows, infuriatingly. No one breathed. 

But how to fight an opponent who can freeze with a touch? How to fight someone who is more than human?

He curled his hand into a fist. Alves tensed up, smiling wider. 

Maybe it wasn’t so difficult as he was making it out to be.

Maybe, all he had to do was think strategically. Without moving his head, he mentally measured the distance between the wall and the nearest table.

With an animal scream, he aimed a wild punch at his head, only to pull back at the last second, his foot hooked around his ankle. Alves went crashing to the ground, his mouth a perfect O, the icicle falling from his hand to shatter on the floor, the blast of icy air meant for him shooting up to frost the ceiling tiles instead. In the confusion, Devon pounced on him and sank his teeth into his frozen wrist. It was like biting a corpse, except- 

Alves shrieked, pummeling him on the back with his other hand, struggling to wrench the trapped one free. Devon bit harder, his teeth cleaving down to bone, feeling nothing as Alves hit him, nothing as he hit him back - there was nothing that mattered but the table in the corner of his eye and his slow progress toward it.

There was a tussle when he finally let go. He saw stars when he cracked his own skull on his. There were icy touches barely avoided. There was hair pulling, whooping from the onlookers, unintelligible screams. For a moment, he thought he was going to be a popsicle and then-

And then he had him by the wrist, the blood already frozen on his dead man’s skin and _there_ was the hard metal rim of a bench and _there_ -

\- was the _snap_ that bone made when he wrenched it down on the edge with force.

Alves screamed, clutching at his useless hand, struggling to get out from under him as he hit him, over and over again.

 _There_ , in the perfect nose.

 _There_ , in the sculpted cheekbone.

 _There_ , in the tombstone teeth. 

He wasn’t punching Alves anymore.

It was Gelber.

It was Marston.

It was Navarro.

It was the chief.

It was _the city_.

It was himself.

Someone was screaming his name and pulling from behind. With a roar, he spun around to take care of him too and -

It was Delgado, his hands in the air, his eyes wide and frightened. 

His knuckles were covered in blood - whether it was his or Alves’ - he didn’t know. They shook as he looked at them.

Alves was still.

He didn’t resist when the warden fought his way through the crowd and dragged him out by the collar.

-

It was freezing in solitary. He had paced in tight circles for what felt like hours in an effort to keep warm but weariness had won out in the end. Now he had no other option but to sit on the metal grating of the floor and feel it leech the life away from his backside.

His hands ached. He couldn’t quite bend them into fists anymore. His injuries felt bad, but in the pitch darkness of the cell, there was no way of telling just how bad they were. And his goddamn jumpsuit smelled like fish.

And...Delgado’s face when he’d spun around, his fists raised...he couldn’t get it out of his head.

He tried to think of other things. He imagined that there was an icicle forming on the end of his nose like in a children’s cartoon and that his breath made mist when he exhaled. 

That was when he started seeing it. 

The darkness of the cell was complete, yet still he could _see_ the mist of his breath, blacker than the darkness, drifting upwards into the ether. He could see his hands moving in front of his face, his swollen fingers twitching. 

He could see the other person sitting across from him, their toes inches from touching. 

Was that sound their breathing or the exhalation of the vents that brought in fresh air?

He closed his eyes. The presence remained.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears. Sweat soaked his back and turned into ice. He could feel the filmy yellow orbs of her eyes sweeping over him. Accusing. _Condemning._

When he opened his eyes, there were two circles of vibrating blackness perched on top of her head.

Ears. Mouse ears.

His bottom lip trembled. 

There was no apology that could possibly make up for it.

He sat with his ghosts for a time that spanned infinity.

Until the door was wrenched open and a voice harsh to the senses barked orders.

-

He didn’t know if it was his imagination or not, but the stares felt different as the guard led him through the cell blocks.

No one leered at him. No one called out. There was a cautiousness to the people who didn’t look away altogether. Some of it was fear. Some was admiration. Some just peered out at him with wary curiosity. He supposed that confrontations between the spliced and the unspliced tended to go rather differently. And that no one would lay money on him as a victor in any physical contest.

The last thing he felt was proud of what he’d done. Looking down at his crooked fingers made him sick. What kind of person did that to himself? What kind of person got so consumed with pummeling another that he didn’t even _care_ that he was breaking his own fingers? What would _Einar_ have thought?

All through those months of hiding and lying and stealing and planning, he had felt this black slime growing inside the core of his being, oozing out every so often from behind the friendly veneer he presented to the world, until he remembered to push it back where it had come from. But the mask wore thinner the longer he wore it and now…

Shattering it took no more force than breaking an eggshell. 

It terrified him, how easy it been to let go.

Alves flinched when he passed his cell. His arm was in a sling and his face was a misshapen mass of bruises. Despite the severity of his injuries, he looked instantly embarrassed at having flinched and tried to save face by puffing out his chest and giving him a grim look. The knuckles of his good hand were white as he clenched it into a fist. Devon stared back at him with blankest of expressions as he trudged by.

He looked away. Alves’ cell vanished down the hall.

Delgado was sitting on his bed when they approached. He looked at him with that same cautious look as the guard radioed the control room. The cell door _CLANGED_ open and then _CLANGED_ shut behind him. He rubbed his wrists where the handcuffs had dug into his skin.

Delgado said nothing as he watched him from his bed. Something trembled inside him. No, no, he couldn’t have lost _him_ too.

“Hi.” he said, forcing a smile as he sunk down onto his own bed. The mattress pad was about as soft as the concrete it sat on top of, but in comparison to the metal grating of solitary, it was like a cloud. 

Delgado smiled weakly.

“Hi yourself. Er...how’s the weather up there?”

“Frosty.” he answered, nodding his head, “And the locals aren’t much to write home about.”

“Right, right.” Delgado said, nodding back, “So you wouldn’t recommend it for a holiday.”

“No. Terrible service too.”

That silence again - stretching like a chasm between them.

“I can’t promise it won’t happen again.” he blurted out, bracing himself as though for a blow.

Delgado made a pained face.

“I know. But...what can I do to help? Like...right now? For the time being.”

“Can you just…just...” Devon sputtered, trying to hold himself together, “Just...talk to me? I...I feel like I haven’t heard a friendly voice in...in so long.”

“Okay. Uh...” 

He scrunched up his face, thinking.

“What...what do you want to talk about?”

They’d covered every mundane topic a thousand times over.

“It doesn’t matter.” Devon said. He groaned as he laid down. “Something...something that isn’t _here_.” 

“Hmm.” Delgado said, rubbing his chin, “How about...”

He took a moment to think.

“There was...this one time when the boys were young”-

Devon’s head snapped to one side. 

“Wait… _boys_?”

Delgado smiled sadly. The past wasn’t something either of them had ever discussed.

“ _My_ boys. On the surface. They’re...nineteen and twenty two now. Had a messy divorce with their mother. Anyhow...when we were all together, we took them to a carnival. You...remember those, right? The lights, the crowds, the music...my youngest was so scared of the ferris wheel but when we went up...it was after the sun had set and the stars were coming out. We could see every one in the sky. It felt...like we were swimming in them or...just _hovering_ there, in the center of the universe, above every problem we’d left down below. My wife and I, you know. We were arguing even then. But once we were up there...my youngest wasn’t scared at all…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Behind the Scenes: When I was trying to figure out what Delgado's name was going to be I came up with a bunch of lovely, meaningful options...and one jokey option. Naturally, I had to go with the latter. It's okay, though. He didn't get a jokey first name.
> 
> \- Fun Fact: Most of the canonical prisoners are named after developers. Help, I’m being forced to treat a studio’s inside joke with gravitas.
> 
> \- Behind the Scenes: Canon (and development history) strongly suggests that plasmids can be wielded in either hand. But as that would mean that Alves would have to have two broken wrists to be rendered powerless (a bit much) and also *spoilers, spoilers*, for the purposes of this story, I’ve opted to make it so that plasmids are wielded by the hand attached to the arm in which they were first injected.


	8. Fontaine Futuristics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The World’s Worst First Splice, scientifically verified. Delgado gains the ability to conjure balls of goo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- CW: suicidal ideation, self harm, vomiting, panic attack and consent issues.
> 
> \- I'm saying this one's short because the prologue is technically part of it. Yeah. That's what I'm going with. Also, it's kind of intense. >.>

Devon was awakened by the _CLANG_ of the cell door opening and the stomp of booted feet rushing inside. When he opened his eyes to see what was going on, he was immediately blinded by a flashlight and his ears assaulted by a grating voice saying “Up and at ‘em, Sleeping Beauty!” 

Eyes watering, he snapped them shut and groaned. He couldn’t tell how many of them were in here. All he’d seen were silhouettes and the blazing sun they had in their hand. More than one. That was all he knew for sure.

“C’mon.” a less grating voice said, its owner poking him in the side with a baton, “Before the cows come home, preferably.”

He opened his eyes a crack and tried to clear the cobwebs from his brain. What the hell could they possibly-

A hand clamped around his wrist and yanked him out of bed. His eyes snapped open. The truth came rushing into focus. 

Under any other circumstance, the rational part of his brain might have taken over. He might have run a brief series of calculations and come to the conclusion that he was outnumbered, outgunned and that his only recourse was to hold on to what dignity he could as he did as they asked. 

That was not _this_ circumstance.

Reason melted away under the heat of one overwhelming fear. He thrashed and clawed at his assailants. He kicked. He bit. He cracked his skull against someone’s nose. When he shrieked his name, Delgado stared back, frozen in his bunk, the blanket pulled up to his chin. When they had ahold of his ankles and were trying to haul him out into the hallway, he clung stubbornly to the bars. When his still-healing fingers gave out, he let loose an ear-splitting shriek. 

“Shut _up_!” yelled a voice from the cell across the hall.

“Can it!” added another, “We’re sleeping here.”

He screeched mindlessly in response and dove at the eyes of the closest one. Before he could get very far, one of them grabbed him from behind and still kicking at anything that moved, the three of them slowly forced him down against the chilly concrete floor. One of them sat on his chest. The other two crushed his flailing arms in their grip. After they’d managed to keep him contained for over thirty seconds, one of them breathed out and let loose a weary “ _Fuck._ ”

“Should I...run to the infirmary?”

“ _Go._ Quickly.”

“The goddamn little guys…”

The entire block was awake now. Devon could hear their every utterance bouncing off the bare walls, every last one like a slap to the face. 

“Sheesh.”

“Is it over?”

“Get over it, bud. Everybody does.”

“Fucking matchsticks…”

Gradually, he stopped resisting. The horrible grunts he’d been making as he tried to wrest himself free faded into silence. There was a stabbing pain in his heart that had nothing to do with the guard sitting on his chest. As his panic was slowly replaced with a cold, resigned terror, a tear oozed out of his eye and fell, gelatinously, down his cheek. 

His eyes snapped open at the rumble of wheels rushing down the block. A moment after the sound stopped, a hand tried to force a hard plastic mask over his face. Trembling, he jerked his head to one side, purposefully smushing his cheek against the floor. A pair of rough hands immediately yanked his head back into place and held it still, at an unnatural angle, their fingers digging into his cheeks.

A dispassionate looking face wearing a white medical cap stared down at him as it pressed the mask into place, over his nose and mouth. He fixed it with a furious glare as he held his breath against the chemical-tasting air and silently beamed the red hot essence of his hatred in its direction. 

The edges of his vision grew dim. There was a pressure in his head that was steadily mounting and his chest felt as though it were about to explode, guard on top of it or not. It was over. What other outcome could there have been? 

With a gasp, he breathed in. 

A single greedy breath and his body were made of lead. He was too heavy to move. Too heavy to be tense. And now he was sinking away to the silvery, flickering depths of the abyss below. He made a sound in his throat that couldn’t reach his tongue and then, the darkness of the ocean closed over him.

-

“There’s...another thing I oughta tell you.” Delgado had said, at the end of that day when he’d first pulled the mattress pad out from under him.

It was nearly lights out. The cells in the block had all been locked down, their occupants counted for one last time. For the time being, they were still allowed to talk and the faint murmur of other conversations could be heard from all around.

“And what’s that?” Devon had said, rolling over in his bunk to face him. 

Delgado had an unplaceable look on his face. He frowned.

“It’s that...uh...how do I _say_ this?”

He sat up, planting his bare, hairy feet firmly on the floor.

“The thing of it is...we’re not _people_...anymore. To...the Big Man, at least. Sinclair. That...stuffed suit who owns this place. I mean…”

He made a vague hand gesture accompanied by a pained look.

“It’s not _true_ , of course. It _can’t_ be true. _Ever_. But...you need to know that’s not how _they_ see it. The people upstairs. Every bootlicking employee in here.”

He leaned forward. Devon realized that he’d been picking at the thread he’d worked loose from the mattress pad again and jerked his hand away. Any more damage and the whole thing would unravel and then where would he be? 

When Delgado spoke again, his voice was lower. Devon had to strain to listen.

“Legally speaking...we’re _property_ of Sinclair Solutions. And Sinclair Solutions’s got quotas it needs to fill with the fine folks at Fontaine Futuristics. Say they need more guinea pigs than they’ve got volunteers. Happens all the time. You’d be surprised, how stubborn some people are, even when they’re face down in the deepest ditch there is. So...they roll the dice. The… _winners_...get an all-expense paid round trip up the stairs whether they like it or not. Everyone goes, at some point. They keep it fair. Fair as a fucked system can be.

“The point I’m trying to make here is...your number’s going to come up. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But _soon_. You’re fresh blood. They’ll pick you before they pluck an oldun out of bed. Some time after lights out, the night crew’ll march in here and rip off the blankets before you can say boo. It...ain’t going to be a cakewalk. And I...I can’t help you...when it happens. And _when_ it happens to me...you can’t help me neither, unless you’re aiming for a Brig holiday. Are you...hearing me?”

Devon realized he’d been digging his nails into the palm of one of his hands. When he unclenched his fist, there were red marks there. Slowly, he nodded.

The wrinkles on Delgado’s forehead smoothed out somewhat. He smiled sadly.

“I just...don’t want you being caught with your pants down, is all. Moreso then...well...moreso than you’re going to be already.”

With a sigh, he settled back down. When he’d adjusted his blanket satisfactorily, he rested a hand on his belly.

“Heh.” he laughed, completely without humor, “That’s...uh...that’s how I got my gut. Lucky numbers. Never vol-un- _teered_ a day in my life and I aim to keep it that way. Ooh, but those milkshakes look mighty friendly, don’t they? Next time...”

He sighed again.

“Maybe next time.”

“No talking!” a guard snapped, running his baton along the bars as he passed. 

Delgado stuck his pointer finger and pinky out in what Devon assumed was a rude gesture and wiggled it behind the guard’s back.

The lights shut off all at once, save for the red glow of the exit sign.

-

The first thing Devon was aware of was the nausea. He was dreaming that he was belowdecks in some small craft tossed by a relentless storm. If he moved, that made it worse. If he breathed, that made it worse. If he thought of anything at all, that made him sicker still. But he did think...and what he thought was how strange it was that he’d never been prone to seasickness before.

This was wrong.

The second thing that gripped his awareness as he crawled his way back to consciousness was the terrible taste in his mouth. Sweet and strong, but with a chemicality about it. He was drooling something awful. Slowly, he closed his mouth and swallowed.

As awareness of his body spiraled back, he realized that his back felt like it was going to crack in two and that he couldn’t feel his hands. He was sitting on something hard, hunched over in a position that wasn’t optimal for bearing the full weight of the top half of his body. Something was cutting off his circulation. It wasn’t going to get any better unless he moved. But if he moved…

He counted to three in his head and heaved himself upright. His hands erupted into pins and needles. His stomach churned. He breathed in a shaky breath and waited until he was more certain that his insides were going to stay inside. 

Then he opened his eyes.

His arms were neatly fastened to the armrests of a chair with built in metal cuffs. His right sleeve and only his right sleeve, had been carefully cuffed past his elbow. 

He slammed his eyes shut and tried to slow his pounding heart. He could feel the ghosts of hands on his skin, adjusting his clothing to their liking as he slept. Was ADAM an injection? He couldn’t remember.

Cursory wiggling of his feet revealed that they too were shackled to some part of the chair. He’d been without shoes when they’d wrenched him out of bed. Whatever the floor was made of, it was sucking all the heat out of them.

His vision swam when he dared to open his eyes again. He was in a room about as grey and unadorned as the cell blocks. Along one wall was a long, smudged window looking out into a dim hall. At the far end of the room, there was a figure moving about. He hummed softly as he fastened the clasps of a bulky white jacket. His pants were as bulky as the jacket and ended in booties that concealed whatever footwear he had on underneath. It was a firefighter’s suit, he realized, with confusion. Beside him was a cart bristling with scientific equipment that he couldn’t quite make out.

“Hey.” Devon said weakly, his voice small and hoarse

The figure took no notice. He was busy tugging what looked like an oven mitt with slightly more fingers than usual over the jacket sleeve and up to his elbow. When the mitt was on, he wiggled his fingers, frowned, made an adjustment and then wiggled them again. Seemingly pleased with the fit, he turned to the cart and began to fiddle with something on it. 

“ _Hey._ ” Devon said, a little louder. The effort sent another wave of nausea washing over him.

“Lot 162, Incinerate IV” the figure said, over some device on the cart, his back facing him, “This is test number f”-

“HEY.”

His voice echoed between the unadorned walls. The figure stopped. For a moment, it was silent. Then he grumbled under his breath as he pressed a button. The sound of rewinding tape. Another button press.

“So that’s test number”-

“PLEASE.” Devon screamed, spraying spit down his chin, “I-I don’t want to be here. I-I’ll give you a-anything. Please. _Ple_ ”-

“ _Test number_ ”-

“DON’T _IGNORE_ ME.” he screeched, straining against his shackles, “I’M GOING TO KEEP SHOUTING AND SHOUTING AND SHOUTING UNTIL”-

The figure spun around and shot him a glare so icy that it killed the words in his throat. He picked up the other bulky white glove and tested the strength of its fabric. 

“You don’t _have_ to do this.” Devon said softly, a tremble in his voice as the figure advanced, glove in hand. “You have a choice. You always have a _choice_. Please. Please. _Don’t._ ”

He shoved the glove against his lips. Devon glared at him, locking his jaw. 

With an exasperated sigh, he pinched his nostrils shut with his ungloved hand. Devon gave him a despairing look. The figure looked right through him. It was like he was standing at a gas station, waiting for the tank to fill. Or a pot of water to boil. When Devon gasped for air after holding out for as long as humanly possible, he shoved the glove in, made sure it was firmly affixed between his teeth and strolled back to the cart.

“Lot 162, Incinerate IV” he said, again, with the coolest professionalism, “Test number”-

“ _Mmmmmmmrph!_ ”

-“two. Genetic Research Department, Fontaine Futuristics. Thursday, August 8th, 1957, 8:58 AM. Hypothesis: same results as last time. But we have to be sure before shelving it, right?”

He pulled what looked like a cloth welder’s mask over his head and tugged it down until he was happy with the fit. Then, his humming still barely audible behind his mask, he wheeled the cart over and pulled a long, thin case from the bottom shelf. Devon could see now that an aluminum tray on the top shelf held a hypodermic needle filled with a reddish fluid, a cotton swab soaked in iodine and a tourniquet. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the armrest with his right hand, hiding the underside of his wrist. From the case, the figure pulled out a metal probe as long and thin as the case itself and attached it to some kind of handheld device. When he set the device aside and turned to him, Devon glared at him. He kept glaring at him, unwaveringly, as he undid his right cuff.

Without seeming the least bit inconvenienced, the figure unhooked his thumb from the armrest and flipped his arm over, his gloved hand crushing his already aching fingers in a viselike grip. With his bare hand, he prodded and poked at the veins of his wrist. After a few moments of that, he made a pleased sound in his throat, picked up the iodine-dipped swab and swabbed his wrist in a neat, brown circle. 

Devon couldn’t stop trembling. There were tears prickling at his eyes. He tried jerking his hand free one last time; the swab went wild, spoiling the neatness of the circle. It felt like the tiniest of victories. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t even slow its progress. But spoiling one small part of the pattern, demonstrating to them that they were not all-powerful - that _meant_ something. At least, to him.

Completely unbothered, the figure set aside the swab and picked up the needle.

Devon was choking against the gag. The airflow through his nose suddenly wasn’t enough. He pushed his tongue against it and ground his jaw, struggling to dislodge it, if only a fraction of an inch. His stomach made a pained gurgle and he was suddenly seized with terror at what would happen if he vomited.

He squirmed in his seat. He moaned into the gag. The figure kept on ignoring him.

The world shrank down to the pinch of the needle sliding into his vein.

-

In the future, he would only remember it in disjointed pieces.

The blue flames that raced through his veins, blistering the skin above.

The charred skin peeling away like paper.

_Something_ squirming, shifting, _tearing_ inside his brain.

The metal arm of the chair warping under the heat of his touch.

Nasal passages burning with acid. 

A blanket tossed over him.

Choking, begging, screaming against the gag.

Darkness at the edges of his vision.

A figure in white, strolling away.

_Come back. Please, come back._

“9:05 AM. Trial: complete. Temperature: 1637 degrees Celsius. Hypothesis...”

_I can’t…_

The sensation of falling from a great height, then nothingness.

-

For a time, he was no one and nothing - a faceless, bodiless entity drifting in space, pulled about by the whims of people just outside his range of comprehension.

Nothing hurt - not his body, his mind, his memories. He was a puff of ether. A whiff of smoke. A slate of resounding blankness. He was free.

That is, until his morphine drip ran out.

He opened his eyes to see the infirmary ceiling tiles bathed in otherworldly light. Other patients snored, moaned or shifted in their beds around him. In the distance, something beeped. 

He felt like he’d been kicked off the edge of a ten story building. Everything hurt - except his right arm, which felt nothing at all. When he dared to turn his head to look, he was surprised to find that it was still there. 

And then the memories came back. 

They hurt worse than everything else combined.

-

After the body had been dragged from the infirmary, after the night nurse had caught his breath, after the guard had been repeatedly assured that _yes, I’m alright from here on out, you can move along now_ , after the voice saying _I want to die_ grew louder and louder and the fire in his bones grew hotter and hotter, Devon sank his teeth into the fleshy part of his hand at the base of his thumb and bit down as hard as he could.

It was a clean, sharp, focused pain that transcended the others. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think only of it, to dwell within it, to make it his world. 

His heartbeat slowed. His breathing stabilized. The fire threatening to burst from beneath his bandages dwindled into embers. When he let go, there was a ring of red marks around the base of his thumb. His eyes were dry. The infirmary was quiet. For all the tumultuousness he’d felt inside, not a soul on the outside had taken notice. He was safe. He’d done it. Nobody was going to slap him for making a sound. Nobody was going to kill him to shut him up.

He laid back, feeling utterly drained, the sound of that shot still echoing in his ears, the image of the two of them dragging the body into the hall stuck permanently in his mind. For a time, he watched the silvery light play on the ceiling tiles. It was only through sheer exhaustion that he drifted off into a fitful sleep.

-

His arm _looked_ more or less as it had before.

Five fingers, one thumb, all in proper proportion. No fingernails yet, though he could see something starting to grow in. No weird lumps or bumps or misplaced bones. It was much weaker than it had been before, but that was to be expected, what with a good part of it having been freshly regrown and not yet experienced exercise. 

What _was_ slightly distressing was the fact that it was several shades paler than the rest of his skin. Which was saying something, considering how ghastly he’d become since he’d last seen the sun. He could follow the blue tracery of his veins down almost the entire length of his arm. When he rolled up his sleeve, there, just below the elbow, was the jagged seam where old crashed into new. 

It was much the same with the patch of skin he’d lost on his torso. But that was easy to conceal. As long as he was wearing any shirt at all, aside from the occasional grimace of pain when he moved too fast, there was no way anyone could tell it was there. So long as he kept his sleeve rolled down, the mismatch between his hands took a keen eye to notice. He was still _normal_ , whatever that meant down here. From a distance, it was as though nothing at all had changed. 

But that was wrong - everything had changed.

The new arm felt alien. It was as though some mad scientist, for some inscrutable reason, had grafted someone else’s limb to his body when he wasn’t looking. Every time he woke up in the morning, groggily seeing what Should Not Be coming out of _his_ sleeve, he was momentarily baffled to the extreme, until he had regained consciousness enough to remind himself of its origins. 

Maybe it was because he’d seen it destroyed and his brain couldn’t reconcile that with the reality of its restoration - a phantom limb that wasn’t actually a phantom. Maybe it had more to do with the lag in sensation whenever he touched something hot or banged it against a counter unknowingly. Maybe it was because picking up an eating utensil or folding a sheet or trying to button a button without looking at it was something he just couldn’t get his brain to do any longer. Maybe it was because he’d wake up at least once every few nights to find it clenched around a wad of blanket or squeezing the mattress pad so hard that the veins stuck out on the back of his hand and the resulting ache was something he was constantly wishing he had a bucket of ice water to soothe. 

The impulse to slam it in the door of the industrial washing machine flashed through his mind as he tossed in the last of the dirty uniforms. For a moment, he rested it on the ledge, daydreaming fondly of a timeline in which he didn’t have an aching alien appendage with a mind of its own. If it was gone, would he be free of the embers that smoldered in its bones? How nice it would be, to go for one day without having to suppress the urge to set himself on fire with nothing more than a stray thought. 

No. That’d be another trip to the infirmary. His dread at the thought of darkening its door again so soon after he’d escaped it was today more powerful than his fear of immolating himself. 

Reluctantly, he pulled it away and slammed the door.

Delgado was looking at him worriedly from the folding station when he turned around. He glanced away the second he saw him looking back. He’d been acting extra nice towards him lately - insisting on doing the heavier jobs in the laundry room, sharing whatever little extras he got from customers pleased with their haircuts and once, passing him his blanket without a word when the heat went out in Cell Block D during the night, when his teeth were chattering so loudly that it must have woken up half the block. 

Devon wondered if it didn’t have something to do with the way he’d acted when he’d screamed his name _that night_. 

Consciously, he was determined not to hold it against him. 

_He would’ve been beaten and they would’ve taken you anyway,_ said the part of his brain that still clung to rationality. _He did warn you. It isn’t fair, being mad at him._

But that other part - the one that jammed a finger on the kill switch in his brain at every tiny hint of injustice, that was silenced only by something more painful than what it was rebelling against, that told him that there was nothing but wretched, greedy people left in this world - that part was _furious_. It slipped out every so often, in a bitter comment, in a motion that was just a little too brusque, in a manner that was colder than it should have been. Every time he failed to contain it, he’d wallow in shame for the rest of the day. There was no acceptable target he could take it out on this time - only the people who were trying to be gentle with him in the face of his rage.

Barely perceptible to the human eye, Delgado scooted half an inch further down the table when Devon joined him. 

He wished he’d never said anything that night.

-

When the guards passed the little white envelopes through the bars that week, there was a lot more money than usual in with Devon’s pay.

His first assumption was that the head injury from months ago had done a worse number on him than he thought. The second one was that there’d been some kind of mistake. And then-

Then he realized what it was.

He felt like he was going to be sick. Like he was being paid in dirty bills to hush up a scandal. As though any amount of money could possibly make up for it.

He tucked the spare bills under the cardboardish sole of his shoe and tried to forget they were there.

-

Devon hadn’t been sleeping when they came down the hall.

He heard them radio to open the lock and the _CLANG_ of the cell door when it opened. It was a sound that always awakened him, on the rare occasion he wasn’t awake by morning count already. Delgado usually slept straight through it. He didn’t know how he managed it.

A trio of faceless, shadowy guards stepped inside.

His heart was racing. His throat felt like it was closing up. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. It was happening again. He couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t expect anyone else to fight it. But at the same time, _it could not happen again_. It was the infirmary argument in his head all over again. What could he possibly-

They turned to the other side of the cell and prodded Delgado awake.

Delgado stirred and sat up. They spoke in low voices that Devon couldn’t make out over the pounding of his heart. Sleepily, Delgado slid out of bed and shuffled into his shoes. 

Everything in him was telling him to take them out from behind, to bash their heads against the hard, sharp edge of the bunk, to scream like a banshee as he pummeled them to the ground, to do _anything_ , anything at all to stop them taking Delgado. 

Instead, he lay there, absolutely still, watching in silence as the four of them made their exit. The door _CLANGED_ shut behind them. The sound of their footsteps faded away down the block. 

The internalized shame was crushing.

It took more than biting his hand to shut the voice up this time.

-

The other bunk was empty when he woke up, the blanket thrown aside as though its occupant had just awakened minutes before and left for an early breakfast. It was only him, standing at the foot of his own bunk for the morning count. The guard doing the counting asked him where Delgado was and blankly, without emotion, Devon told him.

He couldn’t eat much at breakfast. For twenty minutes or so, he poked at the concoction they’d said was oatmeal before finally admitting to himself that he couldn’t do it. In the showers, he ended up puking up the few spoonfuls he _had_ eaten and then frantically trying to wash the mess down the drain before anyone noticed. 

His shift in the laundry room was a bit of a reprieve. He could focus on the hardness of the labor, on the heaviness of the loads, on the chatter of the other inmates, but it didn’t change the fact that Delgado wasn’t in there with him.

He picked at his lunch alone. He glared at Alves when he and his gang passed by. It might have been his imagination, but the small highlight of his day thus far was them picking up speed ever so slightly when they reached his table. 

The satisfaction didn’t last. By dinner, he was unable to even feign interest in food. He gave up on finding anything that could hold his interest in the dayroom and headed back to the cell. Maybe something would change while he slept. No, that was too much to hope for. The only thing he knew for sure was that right now, unconsciousness had to be better than the alternative. If he could manage it so early in the evening.

But he didn’t have to. When he stepped into the cell, he wasn’t alone. 

Delgado was whole. He was _smiling_. 

Devon wanted to throw his arms around him but deciding that it wouldn’t be the best thing to do in front of a watching pair of eyes on the other side of the hall, he instead hugged himself and sputtered out “You’re _a-alive_!”

“Yeah.” Delgado said, shrugging, “It was actually kind of funny.” 

“ _Funny_?” Devon squeaked, an edge of hysteria creeping into his voice. 

He needed to sit down. Delgado was giving him that look again.

“Yeah…” he said again, looking somewhat relieved when Devon fell on his bunk like a sack of bricks, “The intercom was out in the lab they had me in so...just _imagine it_ : the whole caboodle of stuffed suits and those labcoats that don’t know how to smile, their noses smushed on the glass like a kid with no nickels outside a candy shop and all of them - _all of them_ , mind you - _playing charades to get through to me_.”

Devon made a sound that sounded like a horse wheezing. He still didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Letting out the mad laughter that was reverberating inside his head was probably a bad idea.

“So they inject this weird plasmid in me.” Delgado went on, “Like nothing I’d ever seen before. Apparently I was supposed...to throw it? Like a baseball? It was baseball shaped, that’s all I know. Like a ball...made from _me_. Oh! And Keene was in there with me. I got as far as them wanting me to throw it _at_ Keene, but once I did - ugh, I know it’s not my fault but I ain’t proud of that, you know? We perps gotta stick together. Anyway...it turns out my moral compass didn’t have a leg to stand on because… _nothing_ happened.”

He made a theatrical gesture and paused for affect. 

“Nothing?” Devon asked, taking the bait with a smile. 

“ _Nothing_!” Delgado repeated, waving his arms for emphasis, “I’m staring at Keene and Keene’s staring at me and the peanut gallery’s losing their minds behind the glass, trying to get me to _do something_ that I just ain’t getting and well, eventually this bald suit walks off in a huff and the rest of ‘em give it up a minute later. Next thing I know we’re on the train back to the basement and Keene’s giving me an earful about the load of snot I hucked at his shirt and I’m arguing back with ‘ _well, what the hell was I supposed to do?_ ’ And he’s saying that ‘ _you could’ve missed and hit the wall_ ’ and then I hit him with a ‘ _oh yeah? And then what, smart guy?_ ’ And”-

He put his face in his hands and made a frustrated sound into them. When he sat back up, he had a sad smile on his face.

“I’m just glad he’s okay. That’s...that’s the only thing that matters. So that’s my adventure! Can’t say I’m not happy to see the end of it.” 

“I’m...” Devon said. He had to pause to clear his throat. “I’m just glad _you’re_ okay.”

For a moment, Delgado looked taken aback. Then his smile returned, this time reaching his eyes.

“Me too.” he answered, the corners of his eyes crinkling in genuine happiness.

In the morning, Devon dipped into his shoe fund to buy them both milkshakes for breakfast.

-

“Psst.” Delgado hissed out of the corner of his mouth, as he passed down another stack of folded towels, “Pay johns. After work. I’ve got some friends who want to meet you.”

Devon must have made a terrible face because he immediately dropped the clandestine act and waving his arms wildly, went “Oh _no_! God no! Not like _that_! Jeez, I really should watch how I say things, shouldn’t I?”

Devon hung his head and tried not to laugh. 

Delgado entered the bathroom first. After some lag time to throw any suspicious onlookers off their trail, Devon followed. Each stall, fitted with a heavy lock and a built in slot with a cheery ‘$5’ graphic painted on it, looked exactly like the next. Just when he was starting to wish that Delgado had mentioned something about what he was supposed to do, the second-to-last door popped open a crack and a hand gestured him in. Making a face, he stepped inside. Delgado waved happily at him. Then he had to back up and sit on top of the toilet tank to make room. Devon closed the door behind him and tried to make himself comfortable against the flimsy wall.

“So!” Delgado said with a nervous smile, gesturing to the empty wall next to him, “This is Thomas and Parson.”

Before he could even try to make sense of that, a voice from the next stall over said “Salutations!” 

“Hello.” another one chimed in. There was something familiar about that one. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

“The three of us hit basement-level at about the same time.” Delgado explained, “We’ve kept in touch despite our...differences. Easier to do when one of us’s got a free pass to cut hair in whatever block we like. Barber perk.”

“Hear, hear!” the first voice said excitedly. This was followed by a _thump_ against the dividing wall, a groan of pain and an overdramatic “ _Damn_ you, Parson.”

“It’s your own fault.” Parson argued, “I can’t scooch it back any further.”

“ _Anyhow,_ ” Delgado cut in, “This is Mr. Topside, fellas. Devon to his friends.”

“Hi?” Devon said, scanning through his mental rulebook of etiquette and finding not one single rule in it about how to properly address a wall.

“Oho!” the one who was, presumably, Thomas, answered, the disagreement of the last thirty seconds all but forgotten, “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Good things, I hope?”

“Oh, most assuredly. I’ve always wanted to meet a celebrity face-to-face.”

He laughed hoarsely. It sounded like the banging of rusty pipes. At some point it turned into a cough.

“Maybe you will someday, Tom.” Parson said gently, “There’s always hope.”

Thomas wheezed.

“You okay over there?” Delgado asked, his forehead wrinkling as he pressed his ear to the wall.

“ _Peachy_.” he wheezed out in answer.

“If you say”-

“ _A-hem._ Hem. Gentlemen!” Thomas said, cutting him off with grandiose inflection, “A toast.”

A hand bearing two brown bottles reached up over the top of the stall. The fingers were horribly swollen and the nails were black. Growing out of the back of the hand were a series of red, pus-filled boils.

“Your friends…” Devon whispered, instinctively trying to back up further in the stall than was physically possible, “They’re”-

“A-Blockers!” Delgado interrupted, with a nervous smile, “Right you are.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Parson said, “Though I am on B Block myself.”

“Agh,” Delgado said, making a face as he caught the bottles a moment after they slipped through Thomas’s unsteady fingers, “you know what I mean.”

He handed Devon one of them. It was adorned with a faded ‘Poseidon Pilsner’ label. Feeling rude despite there being no way for Thomas to see him, he gave the bottle a quick wipe with his sleeve.

“A toast to…” Thomas said, losing his train of thought somewhere along the way, “Oh, how silly of me.”

The misshapen hand rose back up and promptly dropped a bottle opener into the toilet.

“ _Goddammit_ , Thomas.” Delgado complained, glaring at the wet spot on his pant leg where he’d been splashed by its trajectory, “I’m not picking that up.”

“Hmph. Well, I dare say you should have been faster on the draw.”

“You’re...not drunk already, are you?”

“Absolutely soused.” Parson answered wearily, “I ran into him at ten this morning and before I’d even _met him_ , he was”-

“What use is sobriety in a pit of despair?” Thomas interrupted, thumping his fist against the wall, “You may as well tell a bird with clipped wings to fly! Or...or an orca to breathe seawater. Or a…”

As he was monologing, Devon handed the beer back to Delgado, rolled up his sleeve and dipped his hand into the toilet. When he went to hand the bottle opener to Delgado, he found him staring at his arm with an expression he couldn’t place.

Unthinkingly, he’d rolled up his left sleeve. The one that concealed the still-healing cut that was too neat to have been inflicted in a fight. The one that Delgado well knew could only have been made by the broken half of a pair of scissors that he’d nicked from his barbering bag before turning it in and hidden in the wall of their cell.

He put on a face that suggested nothing was amiss, towelled himself off with a few squares of toilet paper and tried not to look too hasty as he rolled his sleeve back down. Delgado handed him an open beer.

“Or an autocrat to _just try being nicer_!” Thomas finished, “Don’t you see? It’s unnatural! All of it!”

He thumped the wall again for emphasis.

“Yeah, yeah.” Delgado muttered, “What are we toasting?”

“Uh...hm. I’ve quite forgot.”

“Autocrats being nicer.” Parson said dryly. 

“Ugh. Not I. I’ll toast to...ah, what else is there? The end of sobriety. Cheers, gentlemen.”

The beer was lukewarm and oddly, kind of fishy. But it felt nice, for once, to drink with companions who had nothing at all to gain from him. When was the last time he’d done that? It’d been a while. Longer than since he’d been down here.

“So I got my man to smuggle in this book of Rapture property law…” Parson related, as Devon half-listened, “And I _think_...I think I might have a case for getting my bookshop back.”

“Uh huh.” Delgado said in a tone that didn’t exactly sound sarcastic if you couldn’t see his face but most definitely did if you could. 

“It’s...ah...kind of a flimsy case at the moment. I’ll admit it. But there’s _potential_ there. If I just keep refining my argu”-

“Wait, _bookshop_?” Devon interjected, the pieces he’d been puzzling over finally falling into place in his head, “ _You_...it wasn’t you, was it, who had that shop down in the Drop?”

“ _Wha_ \- you know it?”

“I lived down there. I was in every week until it closed.”

“Hold up! I had a _celebrity_ as a _regular_? And I didn’t”-

“I kept a low profile. I...I barely spoke with _any_ of my neighbors. It was a skill I learned, living down here - not being seen.”

“Damn.” Parson whispered. Devon couldn’t tell if his tone was one of admiration or pity. Delgado just looked sad.

They sipped their beers quietly for a little while. In that time, someone else entered, made a lot of noise a few stalls down and left as quickly as they’d come.

“Please.” Parson said, with the smallest note of desperation in his voice, as though nothing had happened in the minutes they’d been silent, “You were still around for at least a little while, right? After I...left. You _have_ to tell me...my wife, my boy...did you by chance...see them? I never got to leave them a message and I...I just want to know...”

“I’m sorry.” Devon said, shaking his head while knowing full well that Parson couldn’t see, “I might have but...I’m not sure I could pick them out in a crowd.”

Parson sighed.

“It’s okay. I...wasn’t hoping for much.”

“There, there.” Thomas slurred.

“Get your hand off of me. Your boil’s burst.”

“Hm. So it has. I oughtn’t pick at that.”

“But you keep doing it anyway. It’s never going to heal right.”

Thomas laughed that horrible rusty pipe laugh again.

“You think we’re ever going to get a chance to _heal_? You think you can argue your life back”-

“Stop it.”

“And Ryan will say ‘Oh, how wrong I have been proven by your immaculate eloquence, I should have never’”-

“I _do_! What else can I possibly”-

“Not to burst your bubble!” Delgado said, just a little louder than necessary, with a pained smile on his face. 

Thomas snorted. Parson made a sound of disgust. 

“But I think I can hear the D-Blockers lining up for afternoon count. What do you think - same time next week?”

“I think I can manage.” Parson said.

“Oh, most assuredly.” Thomas answered, “I must say, my social schedule is quite open.”

“Good...good.” Delgado said weakly, slumping against the back wall, “We’ll...see you next week, then.”

“Hey.” Devon called through the wall, “It was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise.”

“Ooh, a mannerly celebrity. How charming! To shower us lowly peons with such”-

“Oh, put a sock in it. Yes, next week! Goodnight, Devon, Delgado!”

Devon reflexively waved back before realizing the futility of the action. 

Delgado said his own goodbyes and slipped out ahead of him. While he was waiting for his turn to leave, Devon turned around, half hoping and half dreading catching a glimpse of them stepping out. They didn’t oblige him. When he’d decided enough time had passed, he turned away and hurried after Delgado.

-

There was an awkwardness between them that hadn’t been there when they’d left the cell that morning. Delgado had been too quiet on the way back to the block. He hadn’t said a word since they’d settled in - just brushed his teeth, laid down and commenced staring at the ceiling. Devon was curled up in a ball in his own bunk, the knot in his stomach tightening as the silent minutes rolled past.

He wanted to apologize - to say _something_ about not doing it again, about trying to do better, about how it wasn’t his fault for hiding a shiv in the wall and leaving him all alone with his all consuming dread for hours. But that would have been a direct admission of guilt. He couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud just yet. To admit it to himself, let alone another person. Besides, there was the slim chance that he hadn’t caught on after all. If he kept his mouth shut, he could maintain the illusion that nothing had changed.

One of the night guards passed by, whistling as he ran his baton along the bars. When he was gone, Delgado lifted up the hand he’d been concealing behind his body and fiddled for a bit with the thing in it. Then he tossed it into the air and caught it. It made a wet _squish_ when it hit the palm of his hand again. Toss. _Squish_. Toss. _Squish_. He seemed to be enjoying himself. It wasn’t as though there were a lot of opportunity to play ball down here. That was another thing he never thought he’d miss - mindlessly tossing a ball around for no reason than because it felt good.

_Splort_.

It exploded when it hit the ceiling, the victim of an overenthusiastic throw. The blast radius was bigger than its size had suggested possible. Delgado cringed as a glob of slime dripped down on his forehead and frantically cast about for something to mop it up with. He settled on his bed’s blanket and after wiping his face, stood up on his bunk to mop up the mess on the ceiling. Devon sat up to watch, his anxiety momentarily replaced with bewilderment.

“What the hell _was_ that?” he finally ventured to ask.

Delgado shrugged, nearly lost his balance in doing so and then, at the last moment, caught himself.

“Not a clue.”

“Then _where_ ”-

“But! I can make another.”

He hopped down to the floor and raised up his left hand. It was covered in greenish, sickly looking pores and as Devon watched, the liquid they oozed came together to form another baseball-sized object. 

Devon’s stomach turned. He made a gulping sound and looked away.

“You didn’t say it was that bad.”

Delgado mirrored the face he was making, glanced back at his hand and said, resignedly, “Yeah.”

“Keene hasn’t...grown any weird boils, has he?”

Delgado sucked the ball back into the palm of his hand and then formed it again with a flick of his wrist. Oh, he shouldn’t have watched him do that.

“Not since I’ve seen him, thank God.”

That awkward silence again. He squeezed the ball in his hand, as though trying to crush it, his expression strangely serious.

“Hey.” Delgado said at last, turning to him with a mischievous smile.

“Hey...what?” Devon answered, not liking what he saw in his eyes.

Delgado flexed his wrist.

“Go long.”

“Oh no-no-no-no-no _DELGADO_.”

He was in the process of hitting the floor as it splattered on the wall behind him. There was body temperature slime on the back of his neck. It was probably in his hair. And on his clothes. And his bed. When he wiped it off with his hand and brought it to his nose, its awful, acrid smell made him gag as much as its looks already had. He could see why Keene had been upset about it.

Delgado was laughing under his breath, his hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. His face was turning bright red with the force of his suppressed giggles.

“ _Oh!_ ” Devon snapped, sitting up, “You think that’s _f_ ”-

He laughed. He kept laughing. He was unable to stop. 

The moment it occurred to him to be frightened, Delgado quieted down, wiped his eyes and said “I’m sorry. I’ll...clean that up. It won’t happen again.”

“No talking.” another night guard snapped, not even turning to peer inside.

Devon put a hand over his mouth as Delgado perched on his bunk to wipe down the wall.


	9. Pay Johns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> True besties kick each other in the face. And also try to convince each other to go to therapy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- CW: suicidal ideation, disassociation, gun violence, consent problems, physical abuse and drug addiction.

Devon was already awake when they filed into the cell, their silhouettes backlit by the red glow of the exit sign. He stopped breathing. Every muscle in his body tensed up. For one horrible, sickening, guilt-ridden moment, he _hoped_ it was Delgado they had come for and not him. 

They circled his bunk. One of them, standing at arm’s length, poked him in the side with his baton.

There was a rushing in his ears that blocked out all other sounds. He couldn’t move. His throat was closing up. There was a scream inside it that was straining to get out but _could not_ be allowed to, under any circumstances. 

_Stay quiet and they leave you alone_ , a shrill voice sang in his head. _Stay quiet and they’ll leave you-_

Another poke, as though he were a dead animal on the side of the road. One of them laughed. 

And then he was on his knees, the blanket tangled around his legs, his limp wrists being hooked together with an icy pair of handcuffs. The fire smouldered just below the skin of his right arm. He could burn away the hand that was touching him. He could erase the existence of every person standing there, peering down their noses at him. He could free himself. He could end _all of this_ right _now_ , but…

He was afraid. 

Of what? Dying? _Surviving_? Which was worse? The moment passed. The second cuff clicked around his wrist.

He kept quiet as they hauled him to his feet. He didn’t fight it as they marched him down the block.

-

It felt like a dream. Like he was looking through the eyes of a body that belonged to someone else and everything that was happening was only a thing he was watching from afar. The train ride, the long, dark corridors, the exchange of the handcuffs for the shackles around his ankles, the locking of the grey, windowless room behind him - they were only pictures flitting before his eyes, one no more substantial than the next.

He drifted in and out of consciousness as he waited. It couldn’t really be called sleep. Every creak, every footfall, every half-heard word from beyond the door carried him back to not-quite-wakefulness. 

It was a person in a heavy rain jacket that came to get him. He looked up in confusion for a moment, not quite believing what his bleary eyes were telling him. A rubber-gloved hand gestured for him to follow. While he was still trying to make sense of it, another hand seized him by the wrist and hauled him to his feet. It was a bored looking man with a gun on his belt. He gave Devon a shove in the direction the rain-jacketed person had gone. Devon hobbled after him, struggling to keep up as the person grew smaller and smaller in the distance, before vanishing entirely through a swinging door. The bored looking man followed close behind, not saying a word. 

He was pushed into a room with glaring fluorescent lights. The lock clicked shut behind him. The person who wore a raincoat in a city with no weather regarded him for a moment and then said “Have a seat.” 

He was pointing at an exam table against the wall.

Devon didn’t remember sitting on it - only realised that he already was. Time ceased to flow in ordinary fashion. It jerked about with sudden starts and stops, its passage at once both an unbearable crawl and faster than the speed of sound. 

He was lying on a beach far away from here, watching the clouds go by overhead. 

He was watching a gloved finger flick the air bubbles out of a syringe.

He was awake in the hold of the Sjóormur. Ken had traveled in his sleep and was crushing his arm, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind. 

He felt his veins pulse beneath the tourniquet and the touch of probing fingers, searching for the one they wanted.

He was standing outside under a sky that had opened up, the rain cold and fresh on his skin.

He was watching a cotton swab paint a cold circle of iodine on his sun-starved skin. 

He was crying. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, beating his bloody hands against the lightless walls that enclosed him.

When he looked down, there was a tiny spot of wetness on his jumpsuit leg that hadn’t been there before. When had he let that slip?

It didn’t matter anymore.

He closed his eyes when the needle broke his skin.

The feeling of sticking a finger in an electric socket tingled down his arm and dissipated throughout his body. For a moment, he was numb and willing the numbness to last forever. Better numbness than a raging inferno. Better nothing than a something that was too awful to comprehend. But then, when the numbness receded, it left behind a crackling sort of warmth that was different from the destructive sort he’d endured the first time. 

The minor aches and pains that he’d carried for so long that he’d almost forgotten the possibility of existing without them melted away into nothingness. He could feel everything - the hardness of the table beneath him, the coarseness of his clothes, the trickle of blood through his veins, the swell of his lungs with every breath. The physical reality of having a body, of suddenly finding himself to be the exact opposite of a ghost - it was _so much_. Almost too much. 

And his mind was so _clear_. The dark thoughts that swirled in his head at all hours dissipated like a fog under the morning sun, if they had ever existed at all. All the things that had seemed so insurmountable not a moment ago felt now like nothing more than stumbling stones. 

He imagined what it would be like, to exist like this all the time. To exist as he _had_ been, once, long ago. Never being afraid to speak up for himself. Never being ashamed of things that were beyond his control. Being able, always, to take whatever happened in stride and make something better of it.

 _That’s how they get you,_ a voice that sounded like Delgado whispered in his ear. _It ain’t gonna last._

His breath caught in his throat.

Warily, he opened his eyes.

A bitter taste crept into his mouth as he inspected his sparking left hand, its veins alight with energy raring to break free. He shivered, though the room was better heated than any in the prison below. 

“Electro Bolt calibration, test 23.” the rain-coated person said into a recording device. He paused to yawn before going on. “Genetic Research Department, Fontaine Futuristics. Monday, September 2nd, 1957, 8:32 AM. Go on, now.”

It took Devon a second to realize that the last bit had been directed at him. The man waved dismissively at a table on the far side of the room. It was lined with an array of common household devices. A fan. A toaster. A television. A lamp. Against the back wall was a refrigerator that looked as though it had suffered a devastating electrical fire. 

Wearily, he hopped off the table and shuffled toward it.

-

“Did you hear?” Delgado said, leaning conspiratorially over the cafeteria table, “There’s a shrink in the sub basement.”

“Um _hm_.” Devon answered, not looking up.

The fork he was using as a carving tool slipped and made a sound that he felt in his teeth. Damn left hand. Every letter was turning out squiggly.

“College degrees and everything.” Delgado went on, excitedly.

Devon grunted in reply.

“Wasn’t smart enough to avoid hitting sub-basement though, a-ha. Ha.”

“Ha.”

“The boss man’s actually _hired her on_. Free therapy to anyone who can nab a spot. Can you believe it? Uh...I was wondering...if maybe...are you listening to me?”

Devon looked up from his carving. He’d been at it for the past couple of days. A letter or two per meal, with his other hand casually concealing what he was doing. He was never at it long enough for any authority figures to catch on. If the cafeteria staff had noticed anything, they hadn’t snitched yet. 

“I am.” he answered, eyeing the mound of cooling glue that was still sitting on his breakfast tray.

“And?”

He shoved a forkful of it into his mouth to avoid answering and immediately regretted it. Hot glue was more palatable than cold glue, then. Good to know.

He was getting a cheeseburger tonight. Definitely. With the...well, he was trying not to think about where the money had come from.

Delgado was still looking at him, waiting for an answer. He swallowed thickly.

“Euuugh…” he said, sticking the fork in the mound of glue to see if it would stand up on its own. “I don’t know…”

He let go. The fork was still standing.

“I’ll go with you if you like.” Delgado said, flashing him a small smile. “You don’t have to go it alone if you’re...not up for it.”

He wasn’t getting it. That headache that felt like his brain was about to start oozing through his eyes was coming back.

“No.” he said softly, reaching up to touch the edge of his eye socket.

“N...no?”

What the _hell_ else did he need to hear? 

No, no, he reminded himself - Delgado was worried about him. He was asking because he cared. It wasn’t right to lash out at him.

“It...feels like a setup.” he said, at last looking up at him. “I don’t like it.”

Delgado was giving him that pitying look again. He hated it.

“Not everything is a setup.” Delgado answered, resting his hand on the table. “There are...you know. _Real_ decent folks out there. You can’t know which is which until you try.”

Devon hung his head. An invisible knitting needle was jabbing him in the eye.

“I know.”

“Nothing changes unless you try.”

He wouldn’t be feeling this way if he had just a little bit of ADAM. Just a taste. 

The thought disgusted him.

“No.” Devon said, trying and failing to hold back the wave of anger that Delgado didn’t deserve, “Nothing changes unless I _get out of here_. Do you think therapy is going to help with that? Do you think I’m going to sit down, have a chat and be just _fine_ with being hauled out of bed and poked with needles? No. It’s going to keep happening, again and again and again and talking about my feelings on the matter does _nothing_ to help with that.”

He rested his head on the table, trying to smush the parts of his face that hurt against the cool surface. Could he replace his eyes with ice cubes? That was seeming like a more attractive option by the second.

When he sat back up and saw Delgado looking back at him, he felt awful in a way that wasn’t related to the headache.

“I’m sorry.” he said, finding it difficult to form words through the pain. “I didn’t mean for that to be so...I’m not angry at _you_ , specifically...I just…”

“I know.” Delgado said, a look of sorrow flashing across his face in the instant he thought Devon wasn’t looking. “You’re...not wrong.”

Devon poked at his glue some more. Delgado stared off into space, his hands wrapped around a tin mug of coffee that he didn’t seem to have an interest in drinking.

“Look” Delgado said, smacking the palm of his hand against the table. The coffee splashed in his cup but did not spill. “Whatever happens, we’re all here for each other. Parson, Thomas, me, you. You’re not alone. We help each other, much as we can. Don’t forget that. We’ve all...been through this.”

The knitting needle plunged in a little deeper. He felt like crying. Ugh. Not in the cafeteria. Not where people could _see_. 

Delgado was looking at him worriedly. His hand hovered over his trembling hand, frozen in the air mid-pat. Slowly, he began to pull it back. 

Devon reached up and grabbed it. Delgado’s eyes widened. He squeezed it tight, smiled weakly at him and reluctantly let go.

“Thanks.” he said.

-

“I heartily regret to inform you, gentlemen, that...Ryan’s Raiders won 2-0 last night.”

“...shit.”

That was Parson’s reaction. Understated, but with emotion. Like him.

“ _Goddammit_ Thomas, the hell you’d have to tell me that for?”

Delgado, suitably pissed off and not in the mood for hiding it.

“Shoot not the...humble messenger for...delivering the news!”

Thomas was laughing in between words.

A Block was the only block close enough to the city to get somewhat decent reception. Naturally, the one person in the group who was least interested in sports (or at least pretended to be) was the one upon whom everyone else depended for news of their favorite team’s fate. It was the ritual by which they started most clandestine pay john meetings. Any team owned by Ryan scoring a victory was considered a great tragedy. 

Devon hadn’t followed sports at all when he’d lived in the city and always felt like the odd man out in the midst of their overblown bellyaching. But what he hadn’t realized until a few weeks in was how nice it was to hear people complaining about something so utterly mundane. About a problem that wasn’t quite a real problem and happening so far away that one necessarily had to think outside the walls of the prison to understand it.

“‘Humble messenger’, my ass.” Delgado snapped, glaring at the restroom wall as though it were a person.

“Well that’s twenty dollars down the hole.” Parson remarked.

“Oh?” Delgado asked. “Who’d you pin your hopes on?”

“The Sea Bulls. Really thought they had a chance this year.”

“Ha. Should’ve known. Here I was thinkin’ you’d got wiser.”

“Now _see here_. One year they’re gonna”-

“ _The Sea Bulls_!” Thomas interrupted just a little too loudly, only to let loose the tiniest hiccup he’d ever heard. “Oh, do excuse me. The Sea Bulls are a capitalist construct designed with the sole purpose of pumping money out of unsuspecting boobs - don’t roll your eye at the truth, Harold! Out of...hm...boobs...who...think that such things as fairness and sportsmanship aren’t commodities that are put up for sale every day. Whether they win or lose is ultimately irrel”-

“Boobs.” Parson said flatly.

Delgado snorted and then clapped his hands over his mouth to muffle his laughter. Thomas groaned. Devon smiled, ever so faintly. 

"I am rooming with _infants_!" Thomas growled, blustering. "You want a puerile pap? Oh! How I will show you _boobs_!"

"Oh...god no.” Parson said. “ _Thomas_!"

“Hey.” Delgado said, knocking on the wall. “You can’t do that to a captive audience.”

“The hell I can’t!”

“ _Which_ one of us did you say was the infant?” Parson chided.

“Hm.” Thomas said. “You’ve...made a fair point. Hmm.”

“So…” Parson said, once the sniggering had died down. “Keighley. You’re still there, right? What’ve you done to rile Ryan? I haven’t heard.”

Devon raised an eyebrow. 

“Pardon?”

“What’d you do to get sent basement-level? Most everyone in here’s done it - pissed in the fat cat’s litterbox before they got swatted down the stairs.”

“Er…”

“You don’t have to answer that.” Delgado interjected quietly. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“What if I go first?” Parson said. “Prime the pump, if you will. _I_ like talking about it, at least. Makes me feel better, getting it out there.”

“And here I thought I was my own voice’s most devout worshipper.” Thomas grumbled.

“Shh, you. Okay...so…”

“Oh, I still think you’ve got him beat.” Delgado reassured him.

“Are both of you finished?” Parson snapped. “ _May_ I speak? Anything else you feel like airing? Hm? So, my great crime was...stocking _subversive_ books in my shop. Can’t have the populace educated on multiple economic models, can we now?”

“Naughty, naughty.” Thomas said, clucking his tongue. 

“Sometimes I wish I’d stuck those damn books in the backroom but...I _know_ , by every principle we supposedly hold sacred down here that I shouldn’t have had to. I came here because of those principles. I raised my boy here because I wanted him to grow up in a place where the sky’s the limit, where he could be anything he wanted to be…”

There was a moment of pensive silence as his thought hung, unfinished, in the air. 

“Sometimes I think that…” he resumed, just a little quieter than he had been. “After the first warning, I should’ve thought of my boy. I should’ve packed it up and filled my shelves with the drivel they sell everywhere else you turn. That I should’ve...kept my head down and my family together. But...I stood by what was right and just and I have no shame in that. I can only hope Billy’ll grow up knowing that. Even if...he doesn’t grow up knowing me.”

An uncomfortable silence. What could anyone say to that?

“But he will!” he quickly added, trying to lighten the mood. “Just...probably not _soon_. There. That’s my story. Who’s next?”

“Very well.” Thomas said. He cleared his throat before continuing. “I was a”-

His words were interrupted by a nasty coughing fit that seemed to go on forever. Delgado put his ear to the wall, his brows wrinkling in worry as he listened.

“Thomas?” he called out when things had begun to quiet down.

“He’s still alive.” Parson answered. “He just can’t”-

“I can speak perfectly well, thank you _sir_. Hear my sonorous tones tickling your eardrums! Now, as I was”-

“See a doctor, Thomas.” Delgado said, his face blank.

Thomas sputtered in annoyance.

“ _Whatever for_? So they can give me a dram of cough syrup and send me on my way? I can get better liquor without...without dropping my trousers for a temperature reading!”

Delgado sighed so softly that the only reason Devon heard it was because they were in such close quarters. For a moment, his entire face sagged. There was a hollowness in his eyes that was frightening. Then Devon caught his eye and it was gone, as quickly as it had come. 

“As I was _saying_ …” Thomas continued. “I spoke at quite a few rallies, in my day. Calling for reform! Bare minimum market protections! The cessation of monopolistic practices!”

“Shh, Thomas. Too loud.” Parson said.

“I _had_ to be loud for my message to carry through the crowd! For my voice to do its”-

“ _Thomas._ ”

“Hmph. Yes, well...that career ended in a back alley at the hands of a gang of excrement-for-brains plainclothes _ruffians_. Oh no, they couldn’t even stand before the crowd and debate me like _men_. ‘The tongue is mightier than the sword,’ indeed. Bah.”

“Delgado?” Parson asked. “Unless you’ve told him already…”

“Uh...no.” Delgado said, looking as though he wanted to climb up out the top of the stall. “Not...exactly. Uh…”

“You don’t have to say either.” Devon reassured him.

He stopped looking for an escape and gave him a determined look. 

“No...no.” he said, clenching his fist. “I _should_ talk about it. I...well, my...okay. My barbershop. It...it was driven out of business by a chain...not the Great Chain, no...that’s...ridiculous. Ahem. A _chain of barbershops better equipped and funded than me_. Rock bottom prices, ritzy venues - I couldn’t compete. I swear to god they were working on a loss just to drive me out. They had the funds to handle it, at least for a while. I didn’t. So I end up on the brink of homelessness and I fall in with these chumps.”

“Hey!”

“ _Pardon_ me?”

Delgado smiled.

“These _wonderful_ chumps who go around sparking public debate about the need for...everything that would’ve kept me in business. And everyone in the group pools their resources for the more needy members, see. I’m not homeless after all. My new job is posting flyers and handing out pamphlets. We’re gaining members every day. I’m thinking, ‘if this keeps up and we make some real change in the city, maybe it’s time to send for the kids.’ I came down alone. Figured I’d send for them once I had a good thing going. But then…”

His expression darkened.

“Yeah.” said Parson, with a sigh.

“There was a roundup. Not too long after Tom vanished off the face of the earth.”

“From the Photic Zone, that is.” Thomas said, piping up.

Delgado rolled his eyes.

“Whatever it was...he said. Anyway. There was a protest. We had those, every now and then. Some successful, others...not. This one got violent. They laid the blame at our feet for hucking a molotov and burning down a block of tenement housing but...I swear to this day, on my mother’s grave, that the one who chucked it weren’t one of us. Never seen him in my life. He was dressed the same as any of us, but...anyhow, anyone who didn’t move fast enough got arrested. The press swallowed the whole ‘Communists burn down the city’ story hook, line and sinker. I wonder if any of ‘em are still working up there...the ones that got away.”

“One can hope.” Parson answered, at the exact same moment that Thomas said “I doubt it.”

“So that’s my contribution to the litter box.” Delgado finished. “I just wish I’d left a bigger turd.”

“As do we all.” Thomas said solemnly.

There was a moment of silence amidst the stalls.

“So…” Parson said. “C’mon Keighley, _dish_ \- if you want to.”

He could feel eyes on him through the wall. Delgado was looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and hesitance.

“I…” he said, suddenly forgetting how to put words together.

He realized that he had never breathed a word of it aloud before - nor written of it, nor made any kind acknowledgment that it had happened at all. It was a secret he’d held so close for so long, on pain of death, that he wasn’t sure if it was possible to speak of it. But, like Delgado had said, maybe he _should_ try talking about it. Maybe he should let just a few people in and see what happened. He wouldn’t know until he tried.

“I...rebuilt a bathysphere in my basement.”

“Huh.” Delgado said, leaning forward.

“Okay…” Parson said.

“And…”

The words were stuck in his throat.

“And?” Thomas asked.

“Shh.” Parson hissed.

“If you can’t say it, that’s…” Delgado said, trailing off when he held up a hand for quiet.

“And I loaded it up with evidence that would’ve blown Rapture’s cover.”

“Ha!” Thomas barked. “Knew it.”

“You did not.” Parson snapped.

Delgado was leaning so far forward that he looked as though he were about to slip off the edge of the tank and fall in the toilet.

“There’s more to it than that, of course.” Devon said, the words coming easier as he went on. “I didn’t set out to find Rapture. I wasn’t doing it for any government. I just…”

The headache was coming back. He reached up to rub at his eyebrow.

“I just wanted to see justice done.”

“Justice?” Delgado asked, raising an eyebrow. “You know I’m all for wrenching the rug out from under ‘em any way I can, but...this place. It sounds an awful lot like you’re talking from before you knew about it.”

It was disorienting, knowing a piece of information that seemed so patently obvious to him, but was so far outside the range of the people he was surrounded with. He thought for a moment about how to explain it, rubbing circles into his eyebrow.

“There’s a graveyard beyond city limits.” he said softly. “Did you know?”

“A what?” asked Thomas.

“A graveyard.” Parson answered.

“How do you mean?” Delgado asked, giving him a curious look.

“Ships, planes, subs.” he went on, giving Delgado a hollow look. “There’s so many of them that they’re piled up on top of each other. I’d bet that half the ships that’ve gone missing in the last decade are down there. I had pictures, once. I’m not lying. They tell you that no one ever comes close to Rapture but, well...that’s obviously wrong, isn’t it? I’m sure that’s where they ended up. My crew. I heard them die. And then I had to smile for the cameras and pretend I hadn’t.”

He suddenly felt so tired. 

“Damn.” said Parson.

Delgado was just staring at him open mouthed. 

“Indeed.” Thomas said, all the bluster gone out of his voice. “Please...before you depart, I...I’d like to shake your hand.”

“Thomas, no.” Parson said gently. “You’ll scare him.”

“Scare? _Him_?” he said, his volume rising as he went. “You think such a man as _that_ feels fear? You thinks a man who looks a _murderer_ in the eye and refuses to flinch feels _any_ such thing? You think”-

Devon chuckled.

“Oh, no. That isn’t true at all.”

“Well!” Thomas answered, blundering about for words. “Well...well, _so what_? You’re still standing, aren’t you? You’ve got saliva enough to spit in their faces. That’s the only thing that matters, isn’t it? That you _know who you are_ , even if nobody else gives you the courtesy. Don’t...don’t ever stop spitting in their faces. Have you any desire to shake my hand or no?”

Devon smiled. For a moment, he felt a fraction as brave as Thomas thought he was.

“Alright.” he called through the wall. “I’m in.”

“On...the count of three, then?” Thomas asked, a little less confident himself.

“Sure.”

“One...two…”

He put his finger on the latch and took a deep breath.

“Three.”

He stepped out. The door of the stall next to him was open, but the figure who had emerged still stood behind it. In the gap beneath it were a pair of relatively normal human feet. Cautiously - much more cautiously than he had assumed Thomas was capable of being - the figure peered around the door. 

There was nothing wrong with the left side of his face - it was a squareish sort of face, with a pencil-thin mustache - but when he was far enough out that his other side was revealed…

The skin of the right side of his face sagged like an old burlap bag. His eye was nearly lost in the folds. He smiled nervously and held out his hand, with the sausage like fingers and bracelet of boils. 

Devon swallowed the bile in his throat and shook it firmly. 

“Ohh!” Thomas said, looking for a moment as though he were about to burst into tears. “Parson, look! I’ve met a celebrity face to face! It _has_ happened.” 

He looked back to realize that he was still shaking his hand and quickly let go. 

“That’s wonderful.” Parson answered, with real sincerity. “Come back in. We’ll let them go first.”

“Yes...yes, of course.”

He bowed stiffly and with one last smile, backed into the stall and closed the door behind him. 

Devon looked down at the streak of pus he’d left on his hand. His hands trembled as he washed them in the sink. When Delgado crept up behind him, he almost jumped out of his skin.

“You go first this time.” he said gently. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

He nodded in response, shut off the water and hurried out before he could dwell on the fate that awaited him any longer.

-

Devon scraped away at the last letter with his fork. The remains of the burger were crumbs on his dinner tray now. It hadn’t been real beef, but it had been everything he was hoping for. Not that he should be buying too many of them, though.

Delgado had gone back to giving him the hard sell.

“Keene said she was quote: ‘very kind.’”

“That’s nice.”

It was just about deep enough.

“A real good listener too.”

“Uh huh.”

“Like the mother he never had.”

Devon looked up at him.

“Delgado.”

“Hm?”

“You know what I said.”

He went back to his work.

“I…”

Delgado sighed.

“I do. But…it’s just...”

It was done. He set the fork down, brushed away the metal shavings and smiled at his handiwork. KILROY WAS HERE, one corner of the table read, squiggly letters or not. 

Delgado was still jabbering away, progressively making less grammatical sense by the second as he struggled to find a polite way to say “You’re batshit crazy and I’m deeply concerned about you.”

He knew already, but it was sweet of him to try.

“Tomorrow.” Devon interrupted, looking back up at him and abruptly putting an end to the struggle. “I’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“You…” Delgado said, taken aback. “You will?”

“But only talking, alright? That’s all I can promise.”

Delgado looked ecstatic. 

“Hey, now that’s a deal I can live wi”-

They both jumped at the sound of the crash.

A tray had fallen on the opposite end of the cafeteria. The calamity was not in actuality as dire as the noise had suggested. It was only some greyish sludge and limp vegetables spilled on the floor. A mess mopped up in a matter of minutes. But the reason _why_ the tray had fallen - that was more concerning. 

A guard was holding an inmate he didn’t know by the hair, peering intently into his face. Another one was hastily flipping through papers on a clipboard. His finger stopped on something written on the page and he shook his head. His friend released the inmate, who backed away as though he’d been burned. They moved to the next table over and repeated the bit. 

“Delgado?” Devon whispered, his palms starting to sweat.

Delgado shook his head, as bewildered as anyone. The guard let go of another inmate. They moved a table closer. 

Devon’s first instinct was to run. There was a sense of dread building in his gut not unlike that which had compelled him to ask Ken to bring his gun, a lifetime ago on the surface. A certain _wrongness_ about the situation made all the worse because he couldn’t put his finger on why. 

He scanned the room for escape routes. They were backed into a corner. The exit was about as far off as it could be. They’d chosen it as their table because it was normally better to be against a wall rather than out in the open, but timely escape was another story.

There was a palpable tension in the air as the guards made their way through the room, grabbing and releasing people seemingly at random. The murmur of conversation had all but ceased. Nobody moved. If they made a run for it, they’d stick out like a sore thumb.

His second instinct was to fade into the background. To make himself as unremarkable as possible. To act as though nothing was amiss. To not look at them directly, as they drew closer and closer. He ran his fingers over the scratches in the table and found some small solace in them.

Murphy was at the next table over. Two days before, he’d gotten in some kind of scrap that was over so fast that one of them was on the floor before bets could be placed. He couldn’t recall which of them had won. Looking at the aftermath, it didn’t really seem to matter. The guard seized Murphy’s mop of hair, looked at his two black eyes, went “Christ, look at the shiners on this one” and let go as quickly as he’d taken hold. The one with the clipboard didn’t even bother to look at it.

And then they were here.

Devon stiffened, his skin crawling as he yanked his face up by a tuft of hair, but otherwise showed no outward sign of fear. He looked out with disinterest at the guard studying him. He turned his head this way and that, looking at him from every angle. Despite himself, he grimaced when he bent his neck in an uncomfortable way. 

With a grunt, he let go. Devon’s heart was racing.

“A little crooked.” he called over to the man with the clipboard. “But not bad.”

“Y’think I’m giving any kind of damn about crooked right now?” the clipboard man snapped. He looked harried, as though one more small inconvenience would send him over the edge.

Without warning, the other guard grabbed his wrist and flipped over his identification bracelet.

“020910.”

The one with the clipboard rifled through his papers. The manhandling one left Devon be and peered over his coworker’s shoulder.

“Hm.” the clipboard holder said, when he’d found what he was looking for.

“Well, it’s not Aero Dash.” his companion remarked.

“Y’think I’m giving _any kind of a damn_ about Aero Dash right now? What about him?”

He pointed at Delgado. Delgado flinched when he flipped over his bracelet.

“123158.” 

Delgado looked pale when he let go of him and hurriedly flipped it back with a trembling hand.

“Huh.” the clipboard man said, his finger pausing over an unseen line.

“Huh.” the other one echoed, peering over his shoulder. 

The two of them exchanged a look. Devon did the same with Delgado.

“We agreed then?” the clipboard man asked.

The other nodded firmly. 

“Aight.” he answered, tucking the clipboard under his arm. “Let’s get the show on the road.”

“ _What?_ ” Delgado cried, his voice high and frightened as one of them pulled him out of his seat. “W-What are you _doing_?”

“No talking.” he answered without passion, not even looking him in the eye as he snapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. 

Devon glowered silently as they fastened the handcuffs on him. The thought of shocking the one handling him with the little bit of EVE he’d kept hidden in his system from the last time he’d been upstairs flashed through his mind. Not enough to hurt him. Not enough to give him a chance to escape - the time for that had already passed. Just enough to make him question himself. To introduce one single iota of regret. Adjusting the voltage of his fingers so as not to burn out a set of household appliances for an hour had made him rather good at that.

The guard jerked backwards when he shocked him and gave him a hard look. It hadn’t been much more than a static shock. What evidence did he have that it was more than that? 

Warily, he pushed him in the direction of the door.

-

“Kick me in the face.” Devon whispered, his voice a low hiss across the train’s aisle. Aside from the lone guard at the door, they were the only passengers he could see.

Delgado jerked as though he’d been awakened from a stupor. He’d looked like he was going to be sick for quite some time. 

“Wha… _why_?” he whispered back, just a little too loudly.

Devon glanced at the guard. His back was still facing them.

“They don’t want people with visible injuries. That’s why they left Murphy. Kick me _hard_ and they won’t go through with it.”

He scooted down as far as the handcuffs would allow. Delgado looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Please.” he begged, testing how far his leg could stretch across the aisle. “Look, I’ll kick you first if you want.”

Delgado was trembling. He had been ever since they’d climbed on the train. Delgado who’d never once been in a fight in all his time at Persephone, who cringed at violence when it was too up close and personal, who would let someone twist his ankle without a word of protest. 

He wasn’t going to be of any use.

Devon tucked his leg in and looked down at the metal bar he was attached to. He tried to deduce whether he had enough leverage to cause a face-damaging injury with it. If he leaned back as far as he could and wasted no momentum, maybe. There was nothing else to do but try.

He closed his eyes, held his breath, tried not to dwell on how much this had hurt last time and leaned as far back as he could go.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” the guard behind him said as he seized him by the hair, jerking his head back up at the last possible moment. He recognized the voice of the one who’d formerly had the clipboard. His stress levels didn’t sound as though they’d gone down at all. “What the hell, jackass? I make a pit stop and you take your eye off ‘em?”

The guard at the front spun around and glowered at someone. Devon wasn’t sure if it was his compatriot or him. His neck hurt. The guard didn’t seem to have any plans of letting go. He clenched his teeth when he jerked his head around for emphasis.

“This one’s fixing to break his own nose. I’m not doing this again, y’hear?”

The other guard rolled his eyes and turned back around.

“Jim!” he snapped, bending his neck in a new and painful way. “You get back here and take him or so help me…”

Delgado’s eyes were downcast. He looked away when Devon gave him a pained look.

Persephone vanished behind them.

-

They’d been hustled off the train and into the backstage of some kind of theater. Devon had caught glimpses of dumbly smiling cardboard cutout figures and dusty christmas decorations before they’d shoved him through a door without Delgado. His stomach clenched at the sudden loss of a companion just as lost as him, even if he had been too petrified to throw a kick. Not that it had been the most well-baked of plans anyway.

The first thing he noticed was that the room smelled of smoke. When his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw that every surface within it was dusted with a fine white powder. The rack of costumes on the far wall, the sink, the vanity with the cracked mirror. The floor was streaked with dozens of footprints stepping all over one another and there were charred props in varying stages of wholeness thrown, it seemed, wherever they _could_ be thrown. He tried to picture what had happened here, his mouth agape as the same guard who’d twisted his neck for the entire train ride undid his handcuffs and shoved a dusty paper dry cleaning bag into his hands. 

“Don’t mess it up.” he snarled, pointing at the bag and then pointing at the rack of ruined costumes. “I don’t have a whole lot of these left. Or patience.”

He shoved him into the one clean patch of floor, put his back to the door and stood there glowering at him, his hand on his pistol.

Inside the bag was a sharp black tuxedo. It was at least two sizes too big. The pants pooled around his ankles and his fingertips poked out of the ends of the sleeves. His hands shook as he buttoned the shirt up. At one point he thought the guard was going to kill him for starting with the wrong button and having to redo the entire line. 

To do the bowtie, there was no choice but to look in the mirror. That was the part he’d been dreading. How long had it been since he’d seen his reflection in anything less warped than the back of a spoon? 

He added another set of footprints to the dusty floor as he walked to the vanity in his until-then immaculate dress shoes and paused, finding himself unable to look up. 

The guard cleared his throat loudly. 

Biting his lip, he forced himself to look. 

No. There wasn’t anything he recognized in the reflection. The eyes were too hollow and the cheeks were too drawn. For a moment, he held on to the impossible notion that he was only looking at a picture someone had left on the vanity. But, when he clenched his teeth, it grimaced back at him. When he moved, it followed. He dropped his eyes and tried to focus on tying the bow. 

The bow came out lopsided under his unsteady fingers. While he was trying to straighten it out, he heard the water turn on in the sink and saw the shape of the guard approaching him from behind in the mirror. He set down a cup with a brush and tossed a towel in the dust. Then he felt the barrel of the pistol touch the back of his head. 

“Shave.” the guard said, setting down a safety razor and then hurriedly backing away. “Any funny business and you’re getting a custom lobotomy.”

He picked up the safety razor and wondered, just for a moment, if he could nick himself deep and fast enough to hit an artery. If he could pull the blade out, he had a chance, but doing _that_ under the guard’s watchful eye? Unlikely.

 _Oh god_ , he thought, as the reality of what he’d been trying to plan hit him. 

The razor dropped out of his hand and made a small skid mark in the dust of the vanity. Somehow, the thought of a coolly considered plan was so much worse than inadvertently thinking himself to ash.

“C’mon.” the guard snapped, waving his pistol in the mirror. “Do you have any idea how late we are? _Move_.” 

He winced at the venom in his words and his hand still trembling, reached for the cup.

-

After the guard had rushed Devon out into the hall, the gun pressed firmly against the back of his head, another employee stopped them to give him a shot of EVE. The headache that lurked behind his eyes at all hours abated. The fog lifted from his mind and the weight from his shoulders. Things didn’t seem as dire as they had been a moment ago. Maybe the worst wasn’t going to happen. Maybe, for once, they were going to come back to the cell in one piece and have a laugh about how much they had worried over nothing.

 _Yeah, right_ , said the part of his brain that was unfooled by artificial highs. 

Further down the hall, he was accosted by an employee with a powder puff and another one with a comb. There was an argument about whether there was time enough to slick back his hair and it was roundly decided that no, no there was not. The stylist gave his head a resentful look before hurrying away.

When he finally met up with Delgado, he looked about as green as when he’d left him despite the stage makeup and the slightly better fitting tuxedo. This was probably not helped by the silent trio of gas-masked guards surrounding him. He was being meticulously kept separate from the flurry of stagehands rushing by. It was like there was a bubble around him that no one dared to enter. When he saw Devon, he perked up, though it wasn’t until they were shoved behind a curtain and told to wait that they were close enough to talk. 

“So I figured out where this goddamn train is hauling us.” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Did you now?” Devon whispered, with a hint of sarcasm.

Delgado still looked like he was going to cry, but that got a smile out of him. They both jumped when some kind of uber-stagehand with a clipboard appeared behind them without warning.

"Alright, boys!'' he said cheerily. "We got Poppadopolis Police bigwigs in the audience today, possibly looking to spend some _big_ sponduli if they like what they see. And what they’re here to see is...a plasmid combat demonstration.”

Delgado made a high pitched sound in his throat. Devon narrowed his eyes. The uber stagehand went on, rapid-fire, completely oblivious to their distress.

“It’s your team against another. Winners get a deluxe cell or appropriate financial compensation. Fight’s over when one team’s out of commission. Ground rules are, don't aim for the eyes, no chest wounds, no _lethal_ electrocutions - mild is fine, obviously and...don’t set the curtains on fire. Last time that happened we had to evacuate the entire floor. Everything else’s fair game. You got all that?”

He paused for a moment, looking from one dumbfounded face to the other for an answer that never came. 

“C’mon now!” he said exasperatedly, waving his hands in the air. “You don’t have to be so _serious_ about it. Have fun! Do it with _panache_! Showmanship!”

He pumped a fist in the air. Devon gave him a blank stare. Delgado just looked like he was going to be sick. A moment passed. He sighed and dropped his arm to his side.

“Curtain’s up in ninety seconds. When the buzzer goes off, the match’s started. You’re going to see two taped Xs on the stage. That’s where you need to be when that happens. And they say actors are hard to work with. Goddamn, I should’ve been in Fleet Hall...”

The last bit he mumbled to himself as he hurried away, not quite out of earshot.

Devon breathed out. The second his back was turned, he tore off his jacket and tossed it over an unused lighting fixture.

“Okay” he said, in a voice that was forcibly even. “What’ve you got?”

Delgado was shivering. He jumped at the question.

“W-What’ve I got...where?”

Devon finished rolling up his sleeve and held up his hand. It was sparked with electricity when he clenched his fist.

“Electro Bolt. What’ve you _got_ , in your genes?”

Delgado bit his lip. Slowly, he raised up his hand.

A sickly greenish slime oozed out of his pores and formed itself into a ball. Devon’s face fell.

“I’m sorry!” Delgado blubbered, sucking it back into his palm again. “I-It’s always the gene tonics with me and when it’s a plasmid, of course it’s a goddamn fucking _dud_. I’m so...so sorr”-

“No, it isn’t.” Devon said, trying his best to keep the rising hysteria out of his voice. “It does _something_. They wouldn’t let you in here if it didn’t. They...they wouldn’t have given you the gas mask brigade if it was _nothing_.”

He rolled up his other sleeve with a trembling hand. His heart was racing beneath his calm exterior. Delgado was feverishly mumbling something in Spanish under his breath, his head bowed.

“Figure it out.” Devon hissed, sounding more angry than he had intended. “I’ll...just have to keep them busy while you do.”

“Please.” he added quickly, his voice softening.

Delgado shivered. He was still mouthing the words, though he’d stopped saying them out loud.

Outside, he could hear the muffled tones of someone speaking through a loudspeaker. The curtain started to rise. Nightmare Christmas pageant flashbacks were flashing across his eyes again. Of all the things to come up now. Surely this was at least a bit more harrowing than dropping a gift in front of a manger.

For the moment, they were still shrouded in blessed darkness. He could see jagged, shadowed shapes before him. What they were, he couldn’t imagine. But beyond them, within the single spotlight in the sea of darkness, was a figure, projectiles whirling around him. There was a creeping sensation down the back of his neck when he realized that it was juggling. It caught its last projectile and took an overdramatic bow. 

The lights turned on.


	10. The Plasmid Theater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things fall apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Or, the (slightly) less ominous summary: "The Longest, Most Difficult, Most Involved, Most Emotional Action Sequence I've Written in My Life, Oh My God." Thanks for waiting! =D
> 
> \- CW: suicidal ideation.
> 
> \- Between the first and second games, the Rapture novel and Burial at Sea, the timeline of significant events is kind of screwy. So, in an effort to unscrew things, in this timeline, Suchong was killed and Alexander took over the Protector Program _before_ Ryan took over Fontaine Futuristics. Fontaine goes into hiding not long after the end of this chapter and Tenenbaum goes rogue after a few months of working for Ryan. 
> 
> (Seriously BaS, how on earth are there big daddies out and about and working on city repairs _without_ walking off into the ocean before Suchong’s death? Canonically, there shouldn't have been anything keeping them there.)

There was a restlessness building in the audience like the charge in the air before a lightning strike. Or, maybe more aptly, seeing as it had been years since Gilbert had been in proximity to any kind of weather, like that subtle wrongness in the air just before a person jolts a dead machine back to life with a blast of Electro Bolt. All around him was the creak of bodies shifting in their velvet lined seats. The murmur of conversation had nearly overtaken the annoyingly jaunty music the loudspeakers had been playing to go along with the criminal’s impromptu act below. 

He’d made an admirable effort, Gilbert had to admit. That criminal really was _quite_ skilled with the plasmid. There were things he’d done with it that even _he_ hadn’t known were possible. He was a virtuoso in a field that - to his knowledge - had never before seen one. 

But, as it turns out, even impossibly good ice tricks can only hold an audience for so long.

The restlessness had long ago infected Gilbert too. He fiddled with his armrest. He jimmied his leg. Dr. Tenenbaum turned her blank stare on him when he started doing the latter just a little too close to where her foot was and he stopped immediately, feeling, for some reason, like he was a child who’d just been caught doing something he oughtn’t. 

He put Tenenbaum out of his head and went back to silently agonizing that he was _here_ , wasting his life away in this gilded prison of a theater, waiting - it seemed, at this point, _eternally_ \- to watch convicts smack each other over the head with glorified sticks, rather than doing something of real use in his lab. It felt as though there was a pallet of deadlines dangling by a fraying rope above his head. He didn’t have time for this today. He barely had time for a coffee break on days when the boss didn’t drag him into his business schemes that might very well have gone through without him cutting half an hour and counting out of his schedule to witness what was very much becoming a Grade A circus act. 

The grapevine said that there’d been some kind of ADAM-fuelled altercation in the dressing room, just before the criminals involved were to go on. He didn’t doubt it for a moment. Animals, every last one of them. They proved that point with every experiment he ran. At least, until they had enough Lethevec in them not to be much of anything anymore.

Someone was booing, loudly and obnoxiously, behind him. A balled up popcorn bag whizzed over his head and struck the industrial-grade glass dividing criminal and audience. The criminal either took no notice or was exceptionally good at keeping his composure. He smiled still, his teeth glinting like brilliant, too-white tombstones in the glow of the spotlight. A security guard stepped from his post against the wall and a moment later, the booing stopped, reducing the sound in the viewing gallery back to merely its previous levels of obnoxiousness.

For a moment, the thought of strolling up through the darkness and simply...not returning to his seat stole across Gilbert’s mind. 

He quashed it immediately. It’d be terribly bad form, abandoning Frank and the Poppadopolis executives without a word. He was in too deep to bail now. They’d had drinks in the boardroom before heading to the theater. They knew his name, face and which department he was head of. If their contract went through, the odds that he’d be working directly with them on some custom project that’d give them an edge over other police services were high. Better to not embarrass himself just yet.

If an hour passed and the show still hadn’t started, then, well, he supposed all bets were off anyway.

He leaned forward and peered down the row. The entire front row had been reserved for the department heads, Frank and the Poppadopolis executives. There they were, in their expensive suits and slick haircuts, just on the other side of Tenenbaum and Frank - just a little too far to comfortably make conversation with him, though they’d made an effort to do so in the beginning. However, Frank, as usual, was in prime schmoozing position and deep in animated dialogue with them. 

Gilbert squinted at Frank. It was difficult to tell in the low light of the aisles, but…

Oh _yes_. He’d definitely gone into a seething rage. It was the little tells that gave it away - the way he twisted and pulled at his monogrammed handkerchief as though to tear it to shreds and in the unnatural tightness of his smile. Had the house lights been on, in all likelihood he’d have been able to witness his bald head gradually taking on the color of a beet as the minutes ticked by. Now _that_ was a fascinating process to watch, almost worthy of the wait, bad as he felt for anyone unwise enough to be caught in his path when the sheen of his head reached critical mass. 

_How convenient it would be_ , he thought idly, _if everyone was able to reveal their emotional state via color so readily_. 

It would definitely make interactions with Dr. Tenenbaum less unnerving. He could never tell what was on her mind, despite how closely their respective departments were meant to work together. They communicated mostly in memos. Phone calls were rare and in-person discussions, barely existent. He often wondered if she resented him, for taking over the position of her fallen colleague and promptly shelving the research that had killed him. She’d worked with Dr. Suchong for much longer than she’d worked with him, after all. From what he knew from the lab techs who’d stayed on through the transition, in person meetings with Dr. Suchong were not quite the rarity that they were with him.

If it was so, it couldn’t be helped, of course. But nothing she did or said told him one way or the other. They had been sitting next to each other for - he checked his watch - _forty minutes_ now and she had yet to say more than an “mmm” or an “oh, ja?” to anything he said. He supposed that he shouldn’t have been surprised. This was par for the course, after all.

At the start of what was supposed to have been the show, Frank’s arm had been draped languidly around her shoulders. Almost imperceptibly, as time wore on, she had scooched farther and farther out from under it, until Frank, deep in conversation and plainly oblivious to what she’d been doing, had at last taken it away. 

As Gilbert watched, he stretched and - not even looking at her as he did so - casually put it back. Tenenbaum just sat there, looking about as wretched as he’d ever seen her look. It wasn’t quite the same, but he felt a sort of kinship in, of all things, their shared misery. If only that was something he could take back and use in their working lives.

The music got jauntier as the criminal lifted his leg and balancing on the tips of his toes, proceeded to juggle his icicles beneath it. One or two people applauded, more out of politeness than excitement. The person who’d been booing earlier did one more small, chastised boo without throwing anything this time. It was a trick the criminal had been through twice already. The first time had been impressive enough, but now, if Gilbert had had an ounce of belief in the concept of souls, he could have sworn he felt his leaving his body.

_Fine, then._ he decided, literally putting his foot down just a little too close to Tenenbaum’s foot again. If his body was going to be stuck in this torment indefinitely, his nonexistent spirit, at least, could roam free in the lab. He let his thoughts drift back to work. On a normal day, he was fairly good at keeping work-thoughts contained to lab hours, but this was turning into a dire circumstance. Maybe he’d see something differently, if he went over what he knew in a place other than the one in which he set foot every day. Maybe he’d feel better if he pretended he was doing _something_ rather _nothing_ as the frayed rope creaked and groaned under its metaphorical load above him. 

Subject Gamma had been the latest in a string of embarrassments even worse than walking out on a pair of bigwig police executives would have been. All that work - all that _money_ \- traipsing away across the ocean floor to wherever-on-earth the things all got it in their fool heads to go. It still made him wince to think about it. The one saving grace of the experiment was the fact that the creature would in all likelihood run out of oxygen before reaching shore or worse, hooking itself onto some passing ship’s anchor. Probably. He was more optimistic about that part than the rest of it, at least.

It had been a unanimous decision to keep that and all the other previous failures from the press. A lot of paperwork had been destroyed. So many samples had ended their usefulness in the furnace. Employees who said too much at the water cooler were gone the next day. It was shady business, to be sure, but hardly a silhouette compared to half of the things that went on in this company. 

But _why_ had it walked out into its death the first chance it got? Why had every one of its elder siblings done the same? 

At first, like his predecessor, he’d assumed they were too stupid to keep themselves alive and incapable of understanding that the only way of doing so meant staying within city limits. But that wasn’t right. He’d seen proof of their intelligence. It was eerie sometimes, how well they understood instruction. And found small ways to subvert it. That was another problem he needed to work on, once he’d figured out the bigger one.

Subject Alpha had not been halted an inch by the progressively more painful shocks its suit was programmed to administer when it drew too close to the edge of the city. Subject Beta kept going, even as its suit announced that its life support systems were being turned off, one by one. With Subject Gamma, they’d decided to try swapping out the stick for the carrot. Its suit was programmed to administer a cocktail of pleasing stimulants whenever it was in proximity to a gatherer. 

_That_ had been as much of a rollicking success as every other scheme they’d come up with. It was as though, for all the progress they’d made with consciousness management and anamnesis reduction, there was still some part of their minds that he just couldn’t smoothe over. They were as stubborn as they had been when they were men and he’d not yet found the formula for removing _that_ obstacle. 

So here he was, a week on, his project on the verge of failure and still at a loss for what to try next. Both the carrot and the stick? Subject Gamma had shown a mild interest in the gatherer paired with it. More so than the others. But only just, even when they’d upped its dosage. Maybe it was worth digging into. 

As though he had any other ideas.

“Come _on_!” someone behind him shouted, temporarily startling him out of his thoughts.

Dr. Tenenbaum winced at the sound. Frank’s arm remained affixed to her shoulder. The criminal had made an icicle two feet long and looked as though he were about to swallow it. It didn’t have quite the same effect as swallowing a blade that wouldn’t melt upon contact with the internal temperature of the human body. 

Gilbert slunk back to his thoughts.

_No_ , came the thought, unbidden. _That isn’t going to work, is it? And you know it. Suppose you were a shambling monster with no past, no future and nothing to live for. Would a high light enough to not interfere with your work be enough to make you care for a child you know nothing about with your life?_

_Care_. What an odd way to put it. Oh, he was scraping the bottom of the barrel now. Those aides that named every specimen, gave every piece of equipment a silly moniker and who were most likely going to burn out within months of getting the job were getting in his head. He’d only recently discovered what it was that they’d nicknamed the Protectors. 

“Big Daddies.” 

He’d laughed when he heard it. It was completely ludicrous, of course, to ascribe any bit of remaining humanity to those faceless hunk of steel, flesh and canvas. That was probably the entire point. The aides liked a good laugh as much as anyone. 

But at the same time, something about the joke gripped him.

What is the chemical that makes parents throw themselves in front of a moving train for the sake of their child? What is the gene for devotion? From which brain structure can the feeling of love be stimulated? Can any of it be found, isolated...mimicked?

All very interesting questions, none of which he, thus far, had the foggiest idea of how to go about researching. Surely he couldn't bring _actual_ parents in here to study their reactions to their _actual_ children being put in mortal danger. Frank was capable of getting his hands on things he'd never dreamed possible anywhere else, but even he had to admit, that was a bit much. 

Unattached criminals, in all their barbarism. That was what he had to work with. What did they know of love? It certainly wasn't a trait he'd noted at all in any of _his_ test subjects.

Gilbert’s thoughts were again derailed by a flurry of movement two seats down. He glanced over to see Sinclair, the human weasel, hastily whispering something into Frank’s ear. Though he strained to hear, all he could make out were scattered, somewhat apologetic syllables. Frank’s smile became a little less forced. His hand grew still, leaving what remained of the half-shredded handkerchief in his lap. He had visibly relaxed even more by the time Sinclair backed away, as though from a predator he was sure would pounce if he turned tail and ran. He backed all the way to the next row up, collapsed into a chair on the end and was fanning his brow with a crumpled program by the time Gilbert turned away. 

Could it be true? Had the human weasel _actually_ done something useful, free of charge? Was something _actually_ going to happen before he himself went mad from the waiting?

Remarkable. He’d fully expected to see heads roll or, in the case of Frank, explode.

The music cut off mid-note. 

“LAD _IES_ AND GENTLEMEN!” the loudspeaker boomed. “PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR SEATS AND PREPARE YOURSELVES”-

Dr. Tenenbaum made a face and stuck a finger in her ear. Frank dropped his arm down to the level of her waist and pulled her closer. At some point after he’d stopped paying attention, the criminal had gone back to juggling. For a moment, he looked lost in the midst of his whirling, unswallowed icicles, then, gracefully, he caught them one by one and took a deep bow. 

The stage lights went up. Despite himself, Gilbert felt electrified by the excitement of the crowd. He supposed it was down to the sunk cost fallacy. If he’d waited this long for it, it had to be worth seeing. So said the monkey brain that even he possessed. A little more logically (or so he told himself), he decided that he might as well try to enjoy himself, scientific interest be damned.

-

-“FOR A VERY SPECIAL DINNER PARTY!”

Devon was blinded by the stage lights at first. He squinted, his eyes watering as he struggled to make out anything at all. When they finally adjusted, his first thought was to wonder if he was seeing this right.

Before him was a long wooden table, laid out as though for an elegant soiree. There was gleaming cutlery, porcelain plates of great delicacy, napkins folded into swans, immaculately polished water pitchers in which he saw his distorted face looking back at him. Down the table runner were a row of towering vases filled with exotic blooms and prettily wrapped little boxes with bows on top. It was one question answered and about a thousand more asked.

But, _there_ , just beyond the table and coming closer...

He could see the juggler more clearly now. For a split second, their eyes met and - his back to the dark window beyond which the audience must have been - a look of sheer terror flashed across Alves’ eyes. They were the only part of his face capable of expressing emotion. His lips were stuck in some surgeon’s approximation of a bland smile. His eyebrows didn’t move with the rest of his face. His skin was so smooth and tight that it looked as though it had been sculpted of plastic. One of the icicles he’d just been juggling slipped out of his hand and smashed on the floor.

Devon smiled sweetly back at him as he felt the sudden, driving need to crack his knuckles.

Alves glared at him, as much he was able and hurried away to his side of the stage.

They had a single advantage; Alves was still afraid of him. It was more than he’d dared hope for. 

Gently, he hustled Delgado over to the pair of taped X’s on the floor. He was moving as stiffly as a robot in a science fiction movie. 

“When the fight starts,” he whispered in his ear, mid-hustle. “We”-

“ON THE LEEEEFT, GIVE A _COOL_ ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR THE ICE KINGS!” the announcer boomed, making the contents of the water glasses on the table vibrate slightly

Alves and a crony he’d seen before but whose name he’d never bothered to learn were in position on the opposite side of the stage, flexing in the most obnoxious way possible at the faint sound of applause that made it through the glass. Devon rolled his eyes and then tore them away.

“We run for the table.” he finished. “We’ll knock it over and use it for cover. You on the left, me on the right. Can you do that?”

Delgado looked at him, the tiniest glint of hope in his forlorn expression and answered with an equally robotic nod.

“AAAAAND ON THE RIGHT” the announcer continued. “PLEASE GIVE AN _ELECTRIFYING_ WELCOME TO...THE ELECTRO-BOLTERS!”

Devon raised an eyebrow and found the look mirrored on Delgado’s face. _Of course_ it would have been far too easy if they’d named them after Delgado’s plasmid.

There was a moment of silence. With a start, it occurred to Devon that they were supposed to do something. 

He turned to face the audience and did the most pathetic Queen of England wave he’d ever done in his life. Delgado’s wasn’t much better. He swore he could hear the uber stagehand groaning from here.

“ER…” the announcer said disheartedly. At least he wasn’t berating him about the jacket. “THE TABLE IS SET, THE GUESTS HAVE ARRIVED, NOW…”

The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. In the space between words, Alves and Devon locked eyes.

“BON APPETIT!”

Devon shot forward at a dead run. For that instant, the only real thing in the world was the edge of the table. He slammed into it, slid his hands beneath the tablecloth, glanced over to see Delgado grab his side a fraction of a second later and together, they sent it crashing to the ground. A cacophony of smashing porcelain and glass filled the air.

“WHOA!” the announcer said, with a laugh in his voice. “NOW THAT’S HOW YOU RUIN A DINNER PARTY, FOLKS.”

Delgado, panting and red-faced, dropped to his knees, gripping a ridge on the underside of the table for balance.

“Now what?” he asked breathlessly, turning to Devon with a look of absolute trust.

“Uh.” Devon said, feeling a sinking sensation in his stomach against the backdrop of his own racing heart. That was as far as the plan had gone.

“BUT THE ICE KINGS”- the announcer interrupted in a tone that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Before he could figure anything out, there was a heavy _THUNK_ right next to his ear and from the corner of his eye, _something_ plunged straight through their barricade. They both screamed and fell away from the spot it had struck. It took Devon a second to realize it was a butter knife. A butter knife that someone had chucked through what was at the very least _two solid inches of wood_. 

-“JUST SO HAPPEN TO BE EXCELLENT ETIQUETTE INSTRUCTORS. REMEMBER - ALWAYS BREAK YOUR BREAD BEFORE BUTTERING IT!”

“Non-lethal, my _ass_!” Delgado hissed as he heaved himself back up to sitting position.

Devon was frozen, caught between the need to see what was going on out there and the equally great desire to keep his head on his shoulders. Every fiber of his body screamed at him to stay put. His brain provided vivid images of what would happen if he didn’t. But he couldn’t just _sit here_ until they winged something worse than a butter knife at them. 

“C’MON, BOYS!” the announcer chided. “DON’T BE WALLFLOWERS. WE’RE ALL FRIENDLY PEOPLE HERE.”

Gritting his teeth, he climbed to his knees and peered above the fallen table. A projectile went whizzing over his head. He felt the breeze it created part his hair. In the instant before another was launched, he saw him - the unnamed crony, with a fistful of silverware and a smug look about him. He waved his hand and - as though it were attached to strings on the ends of his fingers - a piece of cutlery floated up from the bunch. He mimed the throwing of a paper plane and - 

Devon hurled himself to the ground. A projectile moving too fast to see went whizzing through the air where his head had been a moment ago.

“AND THE ICE KINGS ARE SUCH _WONDERFUL_ CONVERSATIONALISTS.”

“Telekinesis.” he mouthed at Delgado.

Delgado cringed. Something else went _THUNK_ on the other side of the table, though whatever it was, this time it didn’t plunge all the way through.

But he knew one thing now - that there was a lag of precious seconds between the launch of one projectile and the prepping of another. If he moved fast, without thinking, without breathing, then maybe-

The crony screamed as the ball of electricity struck him dead in the middle of the chest. Devon ducked back down as quick as he’d popped up, the thunderous clatter of many pieces of silverware hitting the stage filling his ears.

“AHA!” the announcer said, with more than a little glee. “FIRST HIT GOES TO THE ELECTRO-BOLTERS! SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE? GIVE ‘EM A HAND FOR A FINE DEBUT.”

Devon could barely hear the distant sound of applause over the blood pounding in his ears. He was going to faint, he knew it. Or vomit. At this point it was hard to say which. The trembling still hadn’t ceased after he’d drawn in a deep, shaky breath. He’d hit a _person_ with what? Fifty volts, at minimum? It was less than he was capable of. He’d seen people survive worse but then again, he’d also seen them end up worse from less. It was a _terrible_ amount of power for a person to have at their fingertips. 

And he couldn’t stop there.

He glanced at Delgado - squeezing his green ball for dear life, his teeth gritted, his eyes wild with fear - gave him a sad smile that he didn’t turn in time to see, launched himself over the table and took off like a shot. Behind him, he heard Delgado shout.

The crony, still twitching on the floor, was dead ahead. He was going to kick him. It wasn’t the most elegant of plans, no, but if he kicked him hard enough to take the fight out of him, well, that didn’t really matter did it?

He’d almost made it when he fell on his face and went full-body skidding across the floor. 

“ _OOOOOOH._ ” the announcer said, sucking his breath in through his teeth. “A PITY OUR DEBUTANTE’S GOT TWO LEFT FEET. AVOID A TRAGEDY LIKE THIS OF YOUR OWN BY ENLISTING IN FONTAINE FUTURISTICS’ SCHOOL OF DANCE, OPENING… _NOW._ ”

_Ice._ The floorboards were swathed in it. He could see the flowers that had been in the vases floating within it, as though caught in time. When the waltz came on over the loudspeakers, for a moment, he was certain he’d hit his head going down.

His senses came back just in time to see Alves wrench an icicle from the palm of his hand and hurl it at him with the practiced hand of a stage magician. With a cry, he slid out of the way the instant before it would have impaled him. There was a _THUNK_ on the floor beside him. He had felt something razor sharp and icy cold graze his ribs. The thought that it was bleeding and that whatever Alves’ icicles were made of had mingled with his blood flashed across his mind but there was no _time_ for that - he was pinned to the stage by the loose fabric of his ridiculously fitted shirt and Alves was readying another icicle.

The momentary look of triumph in Alves’ eyes, in his frozen, smiling face, was immediately quashed when Devon loosed a crackling bolt of electricity at him. 

“OHO!” the announcer said, with palpable glee.

Alves dodged it clumsily, his coattails flying as he skidded on his own ice. 

“SEE HOW THE STUDENT LEARNS THE STEPS WITH OUR EXCELLENT ONE-TWO PUNCH PROGRAM.”

Devon used the moment to rip himself free and scramble to his feet. He touched his side and looked at his hand. It was sweat. Only sweat. His entire shirt was drenched with it.

“BUY FONTAINE FUTURISTICS PLASMIDS AND YOU’LL BE DANCING THE WALTZ IN NO TIME TOO.”

Just beyond Alves, the crony had stopped twitching and begun to stir.

For an instant that lasted forever, the two of them stood there regarding each other, Devon’s fist sparking with electricity, the light of the sparks reflected back at him in Alves’ terrified eyes. One blast and he’d fall, twitching like his friend had, defenseless against a kick in the head - and he knew it. Could he throw an icicle faster than Devon could launch a ball of energy? Well, there was only one way to find out.

The music of the waltz was going through a tense, shrill violin section. How they’d managed to time that was anyone’s guess.

Alves backed away, looking this way and that, scanning for any sort of out. The power to stop him pooled in Devon’s hand.

And then Alves’ eyes shifted to somewhere behind him. He raised the icicle as though to throw it, but not at _him_.

“DEL”- Devon shrieked, whirling around and loosing the blast at the flying icicle instead. It exploded midair, mere feet in front of Delgado’s gaping face. He took his ball and ducked back down behind the table.

And then it was as though he’d plunged beneath the surface of a frozen lake.

His breath turned to mist when he exhaled. He could feel his heart struggling to complete each excruciating beat. He fell to his knees, shivering, his teeth chattering, his tears freezing to his eyelashes. Alves looked down at him, open-mouthed, the corners of his mouth still twisted into that unnatural smile, his dead man’s hand frozen in the motion he’d just completed. 

And then, he laughed.

“MM-MM- _MM_!” the announcer said with an echoing chuckle. “SEMIFREDDO, ANYONE? WHO DOESN’T LOVE A GOOD ICEBOX DESSERT? BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!” 

He _hated_ that guy. He really did.

Just beyond Alves, the crony staggered to his feet. His hair was sticking straight up, his clothes were rumpled and oddly patterned singe marks dotted the white of his shirt. He planted his heels firmly against the stage floor and grimacing with effort, motioned as though he were pulling a great weight towards him on an invisible chain. There was a sound like furniture being dragged across an apartment floor. Delgado cried out in alarm. 

“LOOKS LIKE OUR TELEKINETIC FRIEND’S BACK IN ACTION AND INVITING THE SHY ONE IN! AW, WHAT A NICE GENT.”

It was as though the chill had stopped all the blood in Devon’s veins. The crackling power he’d felt flowing through them upon getting the dose of EVE felt dull and far away. He tried to raise his hand and could barely muster a single spark. But there, in his other arm, burning hot as the sun beneath his skin, was a power that yearned to melt every last thing that held him back. 

He forced the thought back down.

“N-No,” he said through chattering teeth, struggling to drag himself across the icy floor. “P-Please.”

“What’s that, now?” Alves said, in a singsong voice, as he theatrically pulled another icicle from the palm of his hand and flipped it in the air before catching it again. “Can’t quite heeeear you. Hmm.”

He closed one eye and moved the icicle around as though choosing what part of his body to throw it at.

Devon’s eyes darted to Alves’ feet. He was treading on the edge of the long, fallen, not-entirely frozen table runner and appeared not to have noticed. 

The wood of the table groaned under the force of the invisible chain. 

“C’MON, PAL!” the announcer chided. “JOIN THE PARTY! I PROMISE, WE DON’T BITE!”

“ _GODDAMMIT_!” Delgado shouted.

For a fraction of a second, Alves’ eyes drifted in the direction of the shout. It was enough. With a quiet gasp of exertion, Devon slipped his hand under the runner and yanked it out from under his feet. The icicle fell from his hand and smashed into tiny pieces as he crashed to the ground. 

At that same moment a mighty _CRASH_ shook the stage. Devon scooched around just quick enough to see the table pull itself from Delgado’s hands and fall flat on its face. Delgado stood there, out in the open, looking for all the world like someone had walked in on him while he was taking a shower. Then he took off running, one gleaming projectile after another whizzing after him.

“HOSPITALITY IN ACTION, FOLKS! WHY, I’LL BET HE’S THRILLED HE CAME IN AFTER ALL.”

They were applauding back there. The faintest _whoop_ made its way through the glass.

Alves was laughing again. A chill that had nothing to do with his ice powers ran down Devon’s spine.

“Where’s your part-ner?” Alves taunted in a sing-song voice, his fixed lips twisting into an even crueler smile. He pulled himself to his feet and dusted himself off. “Why, oh _why_...isn’t he covering you?”

Devon struggled to stand up. He wasn’t quite as cold as he’d been at first. He could feel life coming back into his limbs. If he could just-

The air was knocked out of him by a flying kick to the ribs. He gasped for breath as his face met floorboard. Alves looked down at him disdainfully.

“Is he...saving it for a surprise?”

Before he could think to make an answer, he kicked him again. Devon cried out despite himself. He’d bitten his tongue. Somehow that hurt worse than the kick itself. His mouth was filled with the taste of his blood.

“No, I don’t think so.” Alves went on, as he thoughtfully observed another icicle sprouting from his palm like some kind of strange, fast-growing plant. “Perhaps…”

“ _GETTING INTO THE PARTY FAVORS A LITTLE EARLY, AREN’T WE? AH, BUT WE ALL HAVE OUR INDULGENCES…_ ” the announcer said, his voice sounding to Devon’s ears as though it were coming from the end of a long, dark tunnel.

Devon reached for his ankle while he was thinking. He paced just out of range of his fingers, unnoticing.

“Perhaps...it’s just stage fright.” he wondered aloud, rolling the icicle between his fingers. “Or…oh _no_.”

He stopped. His lips curled back to reveal asbestos-white teeth of unsettlingly perfect symmetry.

Devon felt something shift inside him under the force of the next kick. A cry escaped through his gritted teeth. He scrunched himself into the fetal position, as though that would stop another blow.

“Could it _be_?” Alves sang, in that infuriating voice. 

Alves flipped him over with the toe of his shoe. A hiss of pain escaped from between Devon’s teeth.

“Could it _possibly_ be…”

Alves straddled him, grinning as he poised the icicle over the soft flesh of his abdomen. His smile was so wide that he could see the bases of the screws driven into his red, swollen gums.

“A mista-AAAAAAAAARGH!”

Devon screamed just as loud as he came crashing down on top of him, convulsing. The ankle he’d managed to grab and send a burst of electricity through while he was monologing was jerked out of his hand. The icicle was lost somewhere in the chaos. Still screaming, he shoved Alves off of him and scooted away. 

“WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!” the announcer said with genuine shock. “HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS, LADIES AND GENTS AND DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO STAGE RIGHT. THE ICEMAN _FALLETH_!”

Devon lay there, panting and trembling, tears pouring down his face, every breath a knife in his side. He had to _get up_. The blast had been weaker one than the one he’d used on the crony. There wasn’t much time. He had to _move_ , he had to-

He didn’t want to kill him - not really. Even...if Alves had meant to kill _him_. But how the _hell_ was he going to keep him down? 

_A big jolt to the heart_ , said a more pragmatic part of his mind.

_No, no, of course not,_ said another. _Pick up that piece of broken glass._

_What is_ wrong _with you?_ another one sputtered incredulously. _Tie him up with the table runner._

There. That one.

He clenched his jaw, groaned as he heaved himself into sitting position and tugged at the runner. 

He couldn’t do it.

It was pinned beneath the full weight of the fallen table. 

While he was trying to rip it free, there was a rush of wind, a sound like a gong and all of a sudden he was on the floor, gasping for breath again. A water pitcher had struck him with terrible force in the side that Alves hadn’t kicked. It rolled back and forth, water dripping from its spout, his reflection even more warped than before in its dented surface.

“ _OH, NO!_ ” the announcer said, still speaking from the end of that tunnel. “ _LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE’S HAD TOO MUCH TO DRINK._ ”

He was still trying to get his bearings when someone grabbed him under the armpits and sharply dragged him away. He shrieked bloody murder and thrashed with all he had as he tried to break free.

“Stop it goddamn you, it’s _me_!” Delgado shouted in his ear. 

A knife went flying through the air and embedded itself in the patch of floor between Devon’s flailing legs. He wisely decided to go limp.

Delgado made that high pitched sound in his throat and picked up speed. They were showered with broken plates and bits of debris as he moved, the red-faced crony hurling everything within arm’s reach at them. 

“OH, BUT WHAT’S THIS?” the announcer said, with what had to have been a beaming smile on his face. “A SUDDEN”-

His voice turned tinny and impossible to make out all of a sudden. It was the biggest relief he’d felt all day.

Somewhat humorously, in the midst of the onslaught, a napkin came falling down from the sky and landed daintily in his lap.

Delgado had hauled him almost offstage. They were up against the curtain that had fallen behind them when they’d first stepped out. Delgado propped him up against a pillar, plunged his hand into the curtain and found his fingers halted by some kind of hard barrier. He groaned, but expressed no surprise. 

For the moment, though the crony drew ever closer, the flying debris was falling short of them. 

“Whath are we...” Devon asked, the words distorted by his swollen tongue. “Going to”-

He finished the sentence with a scream. Delgado had whipped a syringe out of his inner pocket and jammed it into the fleshiest part of his thigh with much more than necessary force. He pushed the plunger and its faintly glowing contents were emptied into his leg.

“Medkitinthepartyfavors.” Delgado explained, with a wince of guilt, the words coming out so fast that they all flowed together. “Sorry.”

But Devon’s vision had cleared almost instantly. He could breathe without grimacing every single time. The pain of his injuries was still there but it was dulled, as though muffled with a layer of wool. 

And everything was clear.

“Delgatho, _thuh ballth_ …” he said, sitting up too quickly. The action immediately earned him the reward of a sharp pain that stole his breath away as quickly as he’d gotten it back. 

"Devon!" Delgado cried, his hands hovering over him, wanting desperately to help but having no more means to do so.

"Thuh… _ballth_ " Devon choked out again, clutching his ribs as though he could squeeze them back into place. He was spitting blood down his chin as he talked. "W-When you threw ith ath me I… _c-couldn'th_ sthop laugh...ing ‘til _you_ sthopped. Ith's mind conthrol. Ith’s fucking _mind conthrol_."

Delgado's eyes widened.

"Wha.."

" _End thith_." Devon wheezed, his eyes brimming with tears. "You can"-

The conversation would never be finished. It was cut off by the flying pitcher that hit Delgado square in the jaw. He was out cold before he hit the floor. 

"No" Devon whispered, grabbing at his wrist to check for a pulse. "No, no, no…"

He was alive - unless what he was feeling was the pulsing of his own pounding heart. But no - his chest was moving. It was true.

Devon looked out across the stage to see the crony glaring back at him, his pockets stuffed with renewed stores of silverware. Alves rose to his feet, his hair standing on end, his smiling mask of a face betrayed only by the rage in his eyes. 

They were moving in.

Devon pulled the syringe out of his thigh and staggered to his feet, grimacing with pain as things that weren't supposed to move shifted around inside of him. With a scream, he aimed a blast of energy at Alves. 

A thick shield of spilled water filled with debris rose up from the floor. With a flick of his wrist, Alves turned it to ice. His lightning fizzled out to nothing as it hit it. It moved in perfect tandem with him. When he fired, the telekinetic crony shifted it to block his every blast with ease. The two of them had to have done this many, many times.

Alves advanced. He was unhurried, strolling as though he were making his way down a promenade on a sunlit afternoon. An icicle danced between his fingers, winking in the glow of the blueish spotlight that followed him. Devon’s eyes flashed to the puddle that had spilled from the pitcher as it flew. It was a long, spreading arc of water and Alves was just about to step in the other end. He aimed a blast of electricity at the puddle and-

Alves turned it to ice with a snap of the fingers and strolled right over it. 

Desperately, Devon hucked the syringe that was still in his hand at him. Alves peered out disappointedly from behind his shield as the last, ridiculous piece of hope he had shattered on it. 

There was nothing else left. 

Except fire.

_Go on,_ the insidious little voice in his brain said. _He’s going to kill you anyway. Why not take him down with you? Melt him away. Make it count. Do something worthwhile with your miserable life._

He clenched his jaw, balled his fists and shook his head at no one.

Alves had stopped mere feet away. The light made him look strangely peaky. He mimed throwing the icicle. Unlike the others, it was streaked with pink. Devon didn’t move. Alves burst into wild, knee-slapping laughter.

" _Damn._ ” he said, when he’d composed himself enough to speak. “You _really_ don’t give a shit, do you? Give this man a round of applause."

He was the only one clapping. Devon glared at him. Alves smiled back. The crony rolled his eyes behind his boss’s back. Suddenly, though it was hard to tell with his face the way it was, Alves seemed almost wistful. He began to circle the pillar where it seemed their last stand was going to take place, the shield travelling with him in perfect tandem.

"But I should’ve known that already, shouldn't I?” he said softly. “You cared so little for your own life when last we danced. You were vicious. _Feral_. Diving into something with only your teeth and fists when you were _clearly_ outmatched and _winning_ by sheer _animal brutality_.”

Alves was trembling. He took a deep breath and relaxed his shoulders. Devon glowered at him, following him as he paced, blocking his line of sight to Delgado continuously.

“That’s why you scared me.” he went on. “I’m not too proud to admit it. Oh, no, I don’t believe for a _minute_ that you _really_ give a damn about what happens to you. But…”

He stopped. Devon’s ears pricked up when he heard the faintest of groans from the floor behind him. Alves made no sign of having noticed. Devon glowered harder, trying to make sure that he revealed nothing of what he’d just heard on his face.

_Get up,_ Devon begged Delgado silently. _Please get up. Please be okay._

“...there are worse things in this world, aren’t there?” Alves continued. “You’ve _lived_ them, haven’t you? You have the vocabulary of a clam and the same propensity for gossip, but…”

He trailed off and glanced pensievely between Devon and Delgado.

_Keep going,_ Devon silently willed him. _Keep talking until he sits up and obliterates you. Run yourself into the ground with your own fool mouth._

“No.” he finished curtly. “I don’t think maiming you - much as I’d like to, _believe me_ \- would serve any purpose at all. I think…”

Alves cocked his head and his smile turned sickeningly sweet. He took a wary step closer. Devon realized that it wasn’t just a trick of the light - his skin was deathly pale and shiny with sweat. Dark circles ringed his watery eyes.

“I think” he said again. “That you should live a long and healthy life. As circumstances permit. But him?”

He gestured at Delgado with the icicle. His hand was trembling.

“Well, he won’t be.”

It was as though Alves had stabbed him in the chest with the icicle. The sharp intake of breath Devon had taken when he’d spoken was the one thing he failed to disguise. 

Delgado stirred behind him, a little louder than before. Alves still gave no indication that he’d heard.

“They can’t hear us in here, you know.” Alves said evenly. “The screams, you see...they disturbed the audience too much, in the beginning. So, I propose we make a deal, under the table. I’m a reasonable fellow, truly. Say...you… _pretend_ to take a swipe at me. We’ll put on a show and _then_ I’ll knock you to the side, no more harm done. Promise. And if one of us lets a projectile fly in the midst of that chaos...why, it’d only be a terrible accident.”

He shrugged.

“Happens all the time. I’ve caused my fair share of _accidents_ , you know. I’m quite skilled at it. Should be a no-brainer, right?”

“No.” Devon said softly, his lip trembling.

Alves narrowed his red-rimmed eyes.

“No?” he repeated, his tone darker. “ _Really_ , now? Whyever not?”

“I can’th _do_ thith _again_!” he blurted out, his voice breaking, his fist sparking with electricity.

Alves gave him a quizzical look.

It all happened in an instant.

He lurched forward, the last rush of power he had left surging in his veins. Alves made as though he were about to hurl his icicle at him but- 

It was the shield that slammed into him instead, smashing into a million pieces as it made contact. He screamed, clawing at the icy bits of broken table settings in his eyes. 

_Blink._

Delgado struggling to sit up, holding his jaw with one hand.

_Blink._

Alves drawing his arm back, the icicle wobbling unsteadily between his fingers.

_Blink._

Alves crashing to the ground, his eyes wide and his smile wider as Devon hurls his body into him.

_Blink._

The icicle shatters, its pastel pink shards skittering across the floorboards. Alves’ nose smushes like putty under his fist. It stays that way when he draws his arm back.

_Blink._

A knee to the rib - like a steak knife to the side. Alves slips out from under him as he gasps for air.

_Blink._

His hand caught around Alves’ fleeing ankle, a shock building in his fingers.

_Blink._

_Cold._ Colder than the winter wind of a country that has gone without daylight for months. His breath is frost. His tears are ice. The sparks are dead.

_Blink._

“JUST LET _GO_!” Alves screeches, his kicking growing increasingly desperate. “Let... _g-go_! It’s so _easy_! I do it every goddamn day!” 

A hideous chuckle trembles out from between the chatter of his teeth. How can he let go when Alves was the one who froze his fingers in place?

He doesn’t care about the grinding of bones inside him as Alves drags him belly-down across the floor. Alves’ foot against his face means less than nothing to him. 

But still, his fingers loosen with every kick.

They were never quite the same after he broke them on Alves’ face the first time.

_Blink._

Alves screams as though he’s wrenching off his own fingernail. The icicle that tears itself through his palm is pure scarlet. His sweat soaks through his collar and drenches the shoulders of his jacket. A capillary has burst in his right eye. His hand is shaking uncontrollably as he raises his bloody weapon for a strike.

Alves jabs it between ankle and hand like a wedge and begins to pry them apart. 

His hand is coming away.

_Blink._

The ball.

Sickly green and nauseating to look at, it oozes from the pores in Delgado’s trembling hand, spinning into a sphere like a wretched globe of cotton candy.

_End this,_ he thinks, with a tremulous smile on his lips, through a veil of tears hot enough to melt the rime on his face. _You can end this._

-

All Devon saw was a flash of silver.

It was so small, barely a blip in the grand scheme of anything. A meteorite burning away in the atmosphere the moment it entered. A pale flame snuffed out by the faintest breeze.

But Delgado screamed as though he’d been struck by the asteroid that had killed the dinosaurs. His hand flew to his throat as he crashed to the floor.

And then he was still.

-

The earth did not open up. The walls did not shake themselves to bits. The stage did not run with rivers of blood and the building did not come crashing down beneath the weight of the ocean above.

The world went on, though there was no logical reason why it should have done so. 

All it contained now was a nothingness vaster than the universe itself. A hollowness which sucks all else that exists into its orbit, never to be seen again. 

But what is it that happens when the core of a star suffers gravitational collapse, in the moment before it becomes a black hole? 

It explodes.

-

“Look, I know he’s thinner, but I’m _telling_ you, if you just _look_ at the way”-

“You think if it _was_ him, they wouldn’t have put his name on the playbill? I’ll bet you anything, if it’d sell more tickets, they would’ve done it already. That’s how things _work_ down here. And you know”-

“Hmph!”

“And you _know_ what else happened down here? Your prince charming OD’d facedown in a gutter. He went and got washed up just like _everybody_ else who strolls in here like they own the place. You ever gonna learn?”

“When you’re not obviously wrong, _obviously_. Don’t you think”-

“Oh! Well, _obviously_ you’re just delu”-

“That maybe it’s at least a _little_ suspicious they never released a picture of the body?”

“The hell you wanna see a body for anyway!”

“Well, you see”-

Gilbert squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed his temple and sank a little lower in his chair. That pair of women two rows behind him had been arguing with increasing volume over the identity of one of the criminals for literally the entire length of the show. He was on the verge of whirling around to hush them up himself, which was saying something, seeing as he was deathly allergic to the general idea of confrontation.

Not that the show had proven to be any more interesting than any of the others he’d seen. Slightly variable sticks. Minutely different animals. Very much not worth it in the end, though he supposed he was pleased to hear the occasional impressed sounds coming from the direction of the Poppadopolis executives. 

“OH, _NO!_ ” the announcer boomed, with a mechanical-sounding laugh. “LOOKS LIKE _SOMEONE’S_ HAD TOO MUCH TO DRINK!”

There was a scattering of laughter all about the room. Gilbert opened his eyes and saw that one of the criminals had just gotten beamed with a telekinetically thrown pitcher. Oh, he was down for _sure_ now, after everything else he’d gone through in the minutes before. The other member of his team was still running around like a chicken with its head cut off. With some relief, he deduced that it would likely be over in five minutes. 

Then a gasp rose up from the people around him. The arguing women even shut their traps for a moment. A row in the back cheered. With a sinking heart, Gilbert watched the headless chicken drag his underdressed partner to safety through a barrage of flying wreckage. 

_Fantastic,_ he thought. _Add five more minutes to the estimated time of release, will you Gil?_

“OH, BUT WHAT’S THIS?” the announcer said. “A SUDDEN TURNAROUND! GIVE OUR WALLFLOWER A - OH, DEARIE ME. STILL SHY, AREN’T WE?”

The two of them had gone nearly to the back of the stage and looked as though they were trying to dive behind the curtain. Gilbert groaned the quietest of groans.

There was a slight burst of hope when the headless chicken was knocked out cold by another well aimed pitcher (the things were like the cannon balls of dinner parties, plainly). After that it got _incredibly_ boring. 

The teams faced each other. One stood over the unconscious body of his partner with a grim look on his bloody face. The other - the juggler from before - appeared to be talking to him from behind his hovering shield of ice. The announcer tried to playfully goad them into action over and over but neither of them took the slightest notice. An intercom problem, most likely. He’d been having a lot of those lately. That electrical company Frank had contracted for the installation had come recommended for its cheapness rather than the skill of its employees. Served him right, really.

_No,_ the still-conscious one clearly mouthed at the juggler, his fist sparking with electricity. 

The juggler made an exasperated gesture.

The still-conscious one screamed something he couldn’t lip read satisfactorily, his face contorted with emotion.

Gilbert jumped in his seat when they finally clashed. It was an odd fight. The juggler didn’t seem to want to finish the one who was attacking him off. Rather, he was trying to move toward the criminal who was already down. The unconscious man’s partner was doing everything in his power to stop that from happening. 

He was...protecting him?

There had to be some unseen strategy at play here. For the first time that day, Gilbert found himself on the edge of his seat. 

His excitement didn’t last. Proceedings soon devolved into nothing more than one man trying and failing to pry another, in increasingly clumsy ways, off his person. The uninvolved criminal stood back, his arms crossed, looking just as bored as Gilbert felt. And then his head snapped toward the unconscious man.

With a start, Gilbert saw that he was no longer unconscious. He was sitting up, lifting his hand as though to throw something at the struggling juggler. 

It happened so fast that his eyes barely followed. It was only through thinking through the clues that he figured out what had happened at all. 

The one with telekinesis had thrown a piece of silverware with great force at the one who’d just been about to make some kind of sneak attack on his partner. Gilbert saw his mouth open in an unheard scream as he fell, clutching at his throat. Blood stained the white of his collar. The other two stopped what they were doing. A few empathetic murmurs circulated through the audience.

An anticlimactic ending, to say the least. 

“OOOOH, TOUGH BREAK!” the announcer said, no less cheerful than he’d been throughout the entire show. 

Indeed. Dr. Alexander sat up straight and patted his back pocket to be sure his wallet hadn’t fallen out. He remembered a point in his life when he would have spent this time gathering up his jacket and hat, but who needs those anymore, in a perfectly climate controlled city?

“BUT NOT TO WORRY, OUR MEDICAL TEAM WILL BE OUT IN A JIFFY.” the announcer went on.

Not exactly a lie. He supposed “pair of dropout med school students with a suitcase of medical-grade ADAM” was a bit of a mouthful. Assuming they could get on the scene in time. It didn’t always happen so smoothly. Not that an audience had ever noticed.

This audience seemed as uninvested in the safety of the fallen man as any other. When the house lights went up, it was revealed that they were doing much the same as he’d been - making sure their things were in order and preparing to leave. The murmur of conversation filled the viewing gallery once again.

Frank’s head had not the faintest touch of red as he chatted away with the nodding executives, gesturing to one thing or another on the stage.

“AND THAT’S A WRAP, FOLKS!” the announcer went on cheerily. “THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATRONAGE AND COME BACK SOON!” 

Dr. Tenenbaum stretched her legs and rolled her shoulders. At some point during the show Frank had let go of her again. Their eyes met for a second and just for that moment, it felt as though they’d been through something together and reached some sort of understanding that transcended office politics. Then she glanced away like he’d passed wind and she was trying to ignore it out of politeness.

Gilbert tried not to let it get him down. He figured he should stick around to say goodbye to the executives, if Frank wasn’t going to be too much longer. He settled on fiddling with his watch to pass the time.

“DON’T FORGET TO PICK UP YOUR VERY OWN FONTAINE FUTURISTICS CATALOG ON THE WAY OUT” the announcer added. “WITH ITS _VERY_ EXCITING REVEAL OF OUR BRAND NEW WINTER COLLECTION! AND REMEMBER, THE FUTURE IS - _oh-hhhh._ ”

Nothing could have sent his adrenal glands into overdrive faster than that staticy, small intake of breath. Except, perhaps, the strangled sound that came out of Frank’s mouth and the scream of the woman who had still been arguing not five minutes before. Gilbert’s head whipped back to the stage and-

The juggler was engulfed in flames. 

He danced like a broken marionette, his limbs jerking wildly, his flesh melting off his body into a boiling puddle around his flailing feet. His partner raced around him, struggling to find some way to help, but unable to get much closer without putting himself in harm’s way. 

“E-EVERYONE, STAY CALM AND PLEASE FILE OUT IN AN ORDERLY”-

He could hear a mad rush of bodies stomping through the aisles, a series of panicked cries, the shout of a security guard.

“MERELY AN ACCIDENT”-

But Gilbert stayed where he was, his knuckles white as he clenched the armrests, his eyes fixed as firmly on the scene as though they’d been bolted into place inside his head. He couldn’t look away, even if he had wanted to. 

The juggler collapsed, his dance done at last, his body still smouldering as it hit the floor. 

The one who had done it climbed to his feet. 

Gilbert couldn’t comprehend how he was still standing. The skin was peeling in strips from his scorched arm. Half the hair had been burned from his head. He was hunched over, holding his side with his uninjured arm as though he were in great pain. 

Slowly, he walked.

The telekinetic criminal was still trying to revive his partner. He beat out the flames with his jacket. His mouth opened and closed in soundless screams, at the curtain in back, at the glass in front of him, at anyone. 

He stopped when he saw the half-burned man approaching. His face went ashen white. He stumbled away, tripping over his partner’s blackened leg. 

Still, the burned man approached. 

The telekinetic criminal was backed up against the far side of the stage. He smacked the curtain behind him, his mouth moving as he yelled to whoever was on the other side of it. When no answer came, he pulled a piece of silverware from his pants pocket, tossed it up in the air and sent it flying at his pursuer.

His aim was way off. It skittered harmlessly past its target’s feet. 

He mouthed the word _fuck_ with great emotion and took off running. 

He slipped on the ice. He stumbled through a maze of broken glass and struggled to his feet covered in blood. His fist left a bloody print on the window when he beat it, the glass muffling all but the faintest sounds of his distress. 

Unerringly, the burned man followed. 

He pulled a teaspoon from his pocket and launched it at him. A fork. A fish knife. A serving spoon. They all flew past the burned man, not a one hitting him at all.

One more try and-

It hit. 

The burned man stopped, clutching at the spot on his abdomen where the handle of some utensil stood out of the flesh in which it was stuck. He stared at the one who had thrown it blankly, his face bare of all emotion, his eyes like a pair of black holes. 

He took another step. And another. 

The telekinetic criminal was crying. He threw piece after piece of silverware up into the air, but every last one of them came crashing down, useless at his feet. EVE. He was out of EVE. Gilbert’s heart was caught in his throat.

He ran. He stumbled. He fell. 

There was no helping him. Opening the bulkhead door behind the curtain was a death sentence for anyone else who would dare to enter. 

After a time, he seemed to realize this. 

He fell for the last time and did not get up. 

He looked up from the floor as the burned, stabbed, dauntless man approached, raising his charred arm with inexorable effort, the flames that had scorched it reigniting in a blaze of blue fire. 

He closed his eyes as it washed over him, his body as brilliant a bonfire as his partner’s had been.

The last man standing collapsed in a smouldering heap.

Gilbert watched them burn for a time, filled with a wordless horror, a soundless elation, an unfathomable cascade of all the strange emotions as of yet undescribed by science.

Hardly conscious of what he was doing, Gilbert got up and walked toward the glass. He fancied he could feel the heat through it, though whether this was true or a product of his imagination, he could not discern.

_How awful,_ he thought. _How majestic. How terrifying._

Such _care_. Such destruction. Such a pity.

He had to have him. 

Alive, preferably. But if there was only a corpse left for study, well, he’d make do. 

_Sinclair!_

The thought sprung into his mind like the wail of a siren.

His senses coming back to him like the crashing of a wave, he whirled around, his eyes scanning frantically for the seat he saw him take earlier. Empty. Empty. Most of them empty and no human weasel in sight.

With a mumbled pardon, he brushed past Tenenbaum, still in her seat, the flames dancing in her staring eyes. He squeezed past the executives, past Frank, past their outraged horror and his wheedling, failing salesmanship. The contract is definitely off and he’s being ruder than he’s ever been in his life but he just couldn’t find it in himself to care. He managed to make it up the stairs without barreling through the last few stragglers, all the while making sure to keep his pace even, his heartbeat steady, his dignity intact.

When he made it to the exit, he broke into a dead run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Behind the Scenes: Thomas Bergerson’s ‘Avalanche’ was the song I used to hype myself up for writing the fight scene.
> 
> \- Behind the Scenes: It may amuse you to know that the earliest draft of the fight scene had the telekinetic guy dropping a grand piano on his own head. 
> 
> \- Behind the Scenes: Seriously, my previous record for action sequences was like...5 google doc pages. I have a strong personal philosophy of keeping fight scenes short and punchy. Not today!


	11. Solitary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get worse. But Delgado finds a new reason to keep going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- CW: consent issues, self harm, memory loss, suicide mention and drug addiction.

Delgado opened his eyes. 

Through a web of winking, dancing stars, he caught glimpses of darkened lighting rigs and red curtains trailing upward into the gloom. The stench of smoke was thick in the air and far away, through the ringing in his ears, someone was shouting. 

“Dev-uh…” he slurred, his voice small and strange to his ears.

He squeezed his eyes shut and put a hand to his neck. With wonderment, he came to the realization that he was still breathing. The stars remained, flickering behind his eyelids, offering nothing in the way of answers. His neck was slick and warm beneath his trembling fingers, but nowhere near as damp as he was sure it should have been.

“ _Dev-uh!_ ” he repeated, his eyes snapping open as the piece that completed the picture fell into place.

The world spun as he heaved himself upright. 

It unfolded like that nightmare he had with some frequency, in which no matter how hard he tried or fast he ran, he could not move any further than the patch of ground beneath his feet. 

_There_ was what his gut told him beyond all doubt was Devon, in the impossibly-far distance, silhouetted by a spotlight, his shadow long across the smouldering remains of the stage, his arm shaking as he lifted it towards the shadow cowering before him. 

Delgado screamed his name again and again, the syllables blending and crashing into each other until they were unrecognizable, his voice nothing more than a hoarse cry no matter how much he strained, his useless jelly-limbs collapsing beneath him with every frantic, arduous effort he made to crawl toward him. 

Doggedly, he dragged himself forward inch by inch, heedless of the obstacles in the way, his vision narrowed only to the slow-moving disaster that he knew he was powerless to stop but dead set on trying anyway. 

And then his hand sunk into something soft and warm, a thing that shifted and groaned beneath the weight of his palm. His blood turned to ice. With a cry, he recoiled, his eyes darting downwards before he could think to stop them.

For a moment, he stared, uncomprehending. The beliefs that it can’t be alive, that it can’t be _real_ , that it can’t have been who he thinks it is, stay stuck in his thoughts, even as its breath rasps loudly through melted lips and jagged holes where a nose should have been. Even when it turns to him, a pleading look in eyes that cannot be anything but human. 

It made a noise in its blackened throat that sounded like crying and reached out. Delgado jerked away, a hand over his mouth, his body trembling all over.

That’s when it happened.

The light of the plasmid that he had only heard about in unconscious midnight ramblings and waking hints he chose not to pry further into scorched his eyes like the sun once did. He cried out mindlessly, wordlessly, a primal wail that rattled the depths of his already rattled skull.

The fire dimmed. The silhouette crumpled to the ground. 

His mind set, he crawled on despite it all, clambering around the body tugging weakly at his coattails, slicing his knees and palms on the sharp rubbish of the discarded setpieces, slipping and soaking his clothes in the half-melted ice and loosing a string of slurred obscenities all along the way. 

“Dev- _on_.” he said again, forcibly forming his mouth into the right shape and almost collapsing beside him when what little concentration he had left to his name was momentarily shifted away from the maintenance of his balance.

Devon rested on the heat-warped floorboards, curled up like a scared child hiding beneath the blankets. For a moment, it all seemed so familiar. So ordinary. The image of it flashed across his mind’ s eye - him still lying in his bunk, come morning, come midday, come lights out, all but dead to the world and frustrating him more by the day. How badly he’d wanted a friend to fill the silence that Harold left behind. Could it be so simple as pulling a mattress out from under him this time?

No.

His chin was still covered in drying blood. His clothes were torn and grey with soot. His eyes were closed and his face was wrinkled with lines of pain. He hugged his blackened, twisted arm to his chest, as though to protect it from the harm that has already befallen it.

Delgado’s heart gave a start when his eyelids fluttered. When he opened them, his eyes were distant and unfocused, as though he was peering not quite at the place he was in, but through its smoking walls. A sob of relief built in Delgado’s throat as he reached out to touch him - and then he stopped, his fingers inches above his shoulder.

 _He doesn’t like to be touched_ , was what he told himself. It had been so hard to refrain at first, once he’d made his preferences known. Delgado was the type of person who reserved no affection - who slapped friends on the back without a second thought, who once hugged his protesting sons in public without hesitation. Come to think of it, it never really stopped being hard. 

_But that ain’t all of it, is it?_ another thought says, sliding into his mind like an earthworm through muck.

The sound of that raspy breathing echoed through his head, even as he told himself that he could not possibly be close enough to hear it. He sees the scorching blast that _did that_ again, seared into his memory like a cattle brand. For a fraction of an instant, he’s clawing his way through a rabid crowd once more, his heart pounding with desperation and the hope that he can reach the man who would break his hands on another’s face before he can totally beat his target to death - and he feels his gut clench in a terror that makes him feel just as guilty as it does afraid.

He pulls his hand away and rests it on his knee.

“Hey.” Delgado said, in a tone suggestive of having run into an acquaintance in line at the bank. He forced a smile, though his bottom lip quivered and his blinking was fast becoming more erratic the longer he held in the tears.

Devon’s eyes went wide - wide enough to see the stormy blue rings of his irises, as wide as though he was staring at Santa Muerte herself - and then he smiled the gentlest smile he’d ever seen. 

“Ken…” he whispered, his good hand reaching out for him.

Delgado recoiled and the weight of that guilt crashed with brutal force over him all over again. A million and one panicked thoughts whizzed through his aching head in tandem.

_Oh God, he’s delirious._

_He needs me, but…_

_Ken?_

_I’m a horrible friend._

_And I can’t._

They all fell into silence when Devon’s blackened arm flopped down to the floor, revealing the fork buried up to its tines in his gut. Blood oozed from the wound, slowly widening the scarlet outline that darkened the dingy white of his shirt. Delgado’s breath caught in his throat.

“You’re...okay.” Devon went on, so softly that he had to strain to hear it, the smile still radiant on his cracked lips. “I didn’t…”

He coughed, then groaned, then made a horrible face.

“Shhh.” Delgado said, barely able to stop his own voice from trembling. “I-It’s okay. You don’t have to”-

“...fail.” he finished stubbornly.

Delgado hesitated, watching the pale, sooty hand inch toward him. And then he took it, squeezing it tight.

“It’s going to be okay, alright?” he answered, with what he hoped was much more conviction than he felt. “It… _will_ be. D...Dammit.”

Devon sighed, as though releasing a breath that had been pent up for a long time, touched his forehead to Delgado’s knee and closed his eyes.

Delgado trembled. His breathing was almost as ragged as that of the one that would ever haunt his dreams. His blinks were no longer sufficient to stop the tears. They poured down his cheeks and oozed out his nose as he stretched out his other hand to pet Devon’s scorched hair. 

“The hell did you have to do that for?” he whispered, his voice breaking, his tears vanishing into Devon’s hair as he stroked it.

The answer he gets is the same one the stars gave him. He breathed out and realized that his jaw was throbbing and his head was pounding. Spots still flashed and cavorted before his watery eyes. When a wave of faintness washes over him, he squeezes them shut, in the slim hope that darkness would swallow up the sickness he felt, if only for a moment. 

When he opened them, he sucked in his breath again. There was a ring of black-coated figures surrounding them. He blinked and they remained. His bones thrummed with a fear he couldn’t entirely have explained. Without thinking, he pulled Devon closer, as though he could stop them from reaching him by holding him. Devon let out the tiniest whimper of pain. 

“I’m sorry.” Delgado said, backing off a little but holding fast to his hand. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Was it his eyes or were they closer now? For a moment, he believed his fevered mind had twisted their faces into those of monsters, but then he recognized them as gas masks. The ones with which his personal guard squad had escorted him into the theater, holding him at arm’s length. Their wide, buggish lenses stare coolly at him as they approach, their steps measured and wary. Their fear is something he can feel in the air, brushing his skin like a summer breeze.

He looked down and saw that the ball was already in his hand, glistening and green. He has no memory of summoning it. For a moment, he glared at it thinking, _Useless. Useless thing. Useless goddamn hand on a useless goddamn person._

To the right of a gas-masked figure is one who only has a bandana tied around his face. With a wild cry, he chucked it at him. It hit in the most satisfying way, splattering snot down the front of the trenchcoat, the blow sending its owner reeling. 

“Stop it!” Delgado screeched, his voice carrying in the silence of the stage, a spray of spit flying from his mouth. “Just leave him _alone_! Fucking _vultures_!”

The splattered figure stopped in his tracks. 

Delgado blinked. Mind control. It _was_ real.

He chucked another and another and _another_ one out, screaming at the top of his lungs for them to stay where they were. The ones with makeshift masks halted at his command and stood there with dreamy looks in their eyes. He laughed - a weird, gurgling laugh of disbelief that it kept happening despite the recurring evidence that it was clearly designed to happen that way. 

But the others kept moving, the noose of their circle drawing ever tighter around him. He tried to force one more ball out of the sickly pores of his hand and found that he could not.

They descended like the carrion birds they were and tackled him to the ground. His face was slammed against the floor and a knee pressed down against the back of his head. Another one tried to wrench his arms behind his back, but he screamed bloody murder and flailed with every limb that was still free. And he held to Devon’s hand so tight that he felt the shape of it deform under his grasp. The thought that he was hurting him again flashed through his mind and then - 

It was over. 

There was a sudden feeling of emptiness - a howling void inside him - when he realized that he was holding nothing but air. For an instant, he saw Devon, his hand outstretched, his dirty face streaked with tears, his mouth open in a scream too quiet to be heard. And then he was gone, behind the wall of black coats and billy clubs. The cuffs clicked around Delgado’s wrists. The fight went out of him like water through a sieve.

The last thing he saw before they hauled him offstage was a pair of figures in wrinkly scrubs wheeling a gurney through the maze of hazards the show had left in its wake.

-

For a moment, Devon was happier than he had any memory of being.

It was over. Nothing had been in vain. He could stop fighting, stop trying so hard. He could lay the burden down. He could rest, in the arms of the person who had never left him after all. 

He was holding him. Touching his hair like his aunt had never done when he was scared of the dark as a child. Telling him that it was going to be okay. Devon squeezed his hand back, closed his eyes and felt himself drifting away. 

And then they were wrenched apart.

There was shouting and shoving. Rough hands lifting him off the floor, hurting where they touched. His fingers slipping away, though he tried with all his feeble strength to hold on. 

“ _Ken!_ ” he cried out, his voice so small that it was swallowed by the sound of fighting, “ _Ken_!”

And then he was alone.

Bizarre shapes rushed by in a dizzying array when he turned his head. Voices whispered and hissed in a dizzying array around him. A face filled with fear peered down at him and then turned away.

“ _Be a dear an’ hand me that file._ ”

“ _You knew._ ”

“ _Boss, I…_ ”

“ _Pack it up, boys! After today, y’all ain’t getting a job in a flophouse without my…_ ”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Tears were pouring out of them. His chest hurt even more when he sobbed.

“ _Er...ex-boss? You holding up alright?_ ”

After a time, he dared to open his eyes a little. A face he didn’t recognize, its eyes swimming behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, was studying him intently. When he looked back, it turned away.

“ _Well, it sure looks like he could use some, don’t it? A heap of it._ ”

“ _It’d be a kindness. Why, it’d be such a kindness that I’d…_ ”

“ _You want us to **kill** him?_”

His eyes snapped all the way open.

He was locked in a bathysphere depot, a line of gunmen waiting outside.

He was in a closet, pressing a single headphone to his ear as he trembled to hear what was happening on the other end.

He was in a movie theater, the film that was everything he’d worked for dissolving in fire before his eyes.

He was sitting in that chair again, the needle about to pierce his skin and turn his own body against him. 

They weren’t listening. They were never going to listen no matter how hoarse his voice became with shouting, no matter how many times he broke himself against their assaults.

He was done asking. 

And this time, they’d neglected to restrain him.

-

“Boss!” the medic - who was as interchangeable as anyone else in the company and thus, nameless - said, nearly running headlong into Sinclair when he abruptly turned a corner. He stumbled backward, a look of fear on his face when Sinclair just kept on barreling through.

“123158 is on a transport back to Persephone.” he went on, speedwalking to keep up with Sinclair. “T-The other two went into shock when we tried to move them and”-

Sinclair stopped in his tracks and put a hand up for silence. The medic shut his yap faster than a chastised spaniel. 

They’d arrived at the dusty backstage corner where whichever medical staff could be spared from Persephone that day parked themselves during shows. Today, there were two of them. The second medic eyed the prone figure on the gurney nervously, hugging a clipboard to his chest. Sinclair purposefully drew his eyes away from the body and fixed them firmly on the medic.

“You.” he said, his voice calm in that way that suggests that the speaker is holding back a fair amount of outrage. “Be a dear an’ hand me that file.”

He held out his hand. The medic eyed it with a look of apprehension, then passed him the clipboard. Sinclair put his glasses on his face and scanned down the list until he found the pair of entries that had been circled. Electro Bolt and…

Ah. There it was. “Incinerate IV - Balance Issues” it said, simply.

“You _knew_.” he said softly, pushing the clipboard into the other medic’s hands and taking a step forward. “You had an idea that a fella _might_ blow us all to kingdom come and you _didn’t_ reckon you should _speak up_?”

The medic took a step back. There wasn’t much further he could go. He was already backed up against a pile of electrical equipment.

“Boss, I…” he said, his eyes darting this way and that for some kind of escape. “Everyone was in such a”-

Sinclair put his hand up for silence again.

“Mm-mm, nope!” he said, a strained smile on his face. “I ain’t sparing an ear for it. You’re fired.”

He threw his arms up and turned his ire on the one with the clipboard. 

“Y’all are _both_ fired. Pack it up, boys! After today, y’all ain’t getting a job in a _flophouse_ without my”-

“H-Hinckley and Dervis brought them in!” the medic sputtered out, hiding behind the clipboard like a shield. 

Sinclair sucked in a deep breath through his nose. He could feel the cracks running through his composure. Losing it in public was not something he was in the habit of doing but with a miscalculation of _this_ scale...

“ _Four people_?” he said, with a note of rising hysteria. “Y’all are telling me four en- _tire_ highly trained employees of Sinclair Solutions Incorporated saw a...a _self-immolatin’ plasmid_ on the docket and thought it’d be all fine an’ dandy? Y’all said to yourselves ‘Now gentl’men, that’s how you build trust in a brand! That’ll keep ol’ Frankie sweet!’ an’ went _right on ahead_ w-with...with...”

He huffed loudly, squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. It didn’t help much with the headache. The headache had been there almost since Persephone had first opened its doors. Sure, he was making a mint and a half off the place but he had to admit, the inmates who found ways to flood blocks with - of all things - _bees_ , the sheer percentage of employees who ended up electrocuted or frozen, or _worse_ , the absolute impossibility of assurance that anybody who came back from a stint up the stairs was entirely drained of EVE, the fact that when something went wrong down there, it could go no other way but _seriously, deeply, expensively wrong_ \- it wore on him, more than he’d ever, in his lifetime, be willing to admit. 

More than a few times, he’d considered selling it and focusing on the ventures that didn’t require a cold compress at the end of the day. But, as he told himself month after month, he’d be a fool to walk away from a partnership this reliably lucrative. Until this moment, he’d half-expected to be sitting on a mound of riches big enough to build a solid gold skyscraper on the ocean floor by next year. 

So he just kept sitting in his high class office, as far as it was possible to be from the trench that housed the source of both his fortune and his anxiety, smoking his smuggled cigarettes, drinking his real topside liquor that’d make Ryan cry if he knew about it and soaking in the profits that poured in like water from an unpatched crack in Rapture’s infrastructure.

He opened his eyes. The medics were frozen in their spots, eying him warily. He supposed he should figure out an answer to the more pressing question before telling his secretary to serve up however many pink slips it took to restore his sense of financial security.

He pushed glasses up his nose and peered down at the gurney.

A pair of watery blue eyes in a soot and blood streaked face stared back. He took in the burns, the bruises and the scrapes, all with an admirable amount of dispassion, but once he got to the fork, well, it was all he could do not to retch behind his silk handkerchief. These things just didn’t happen in the scrap metal business. Granted, it was _possible_ , in the event of bizarre, unforseen processing accidents, but _probable_? No.

“Stick a fork in him, he’s done, eh?” said the medic with the clipboard, chuckling with a smile that was just a little too wide. “Eh-heh. Hm.”

The other medic gaped at him, open-mouthed. Sinclair coughed into his handkerchief and stepped away before the caviar he’d had for lunch could make a second appearance. 

“C’mon.” the jokester whispered - very audibly - once Sinclair had turned his back. “You were thinking it too.”

“ _Nobody_ was thinking that! You lose your _job_ and the _second_ thing out of your mouth is - er...ex-boss? You holding up alright?”

Sinclair waved him away and hurried over to where it was quiet. This happened to be between a stack of precariously balanced christmas wreaths and some dusty cardboard cutouts of naked babies with trumpets. His legs felt weak. He wanted to sit on the floor and put his head between his knees until he felt better, but this was a thousand dollar suit. So instead, he stood there awkwardly, unable to bring himself to lean against the none too clean wall either. 

He’d never considered himself a weak stomached man. His entire career was built on backroom dealings, shady plans, careful calculations of how to screw over the most people for the biggest return. The last time he hadn’t been elbow deep in dirt was probably at some point before his twelfth birthday. 

But buying stock under a competitor’s nose, signing the papers that would send an entire factory’s workforce out into the streets, hashing out plans to suck every nickel and dime from people with no other options - none of those were _anything_ alike to seeing the effects of his own machinations in person. Why the _hell_ , after everything he’d spent his life doing, should one dying piece of his own legal property be the thing to send his rotting shreds of a conscience into overdrive? 

These things didn’t happen in the liquor business either. Or in toys or housing or production or every other sane, logical business model that wasn’t a part of a market that was ruled by the whims of glowy, double-dog-damned, may-as-well-be-hoodoo worms by now.

He took a deep breath - and coughed for real. The air still tasted of smoke and not the pleasant kind. With his luck, Frankie was probably going to send him a bill for the cleaning. 

He strained to retrieve his wits from the well into which they’d fallen and think through this _logically_. In truth, it was nothing more than another financial decision. In theory, no different from the ones he rubber stamped and sent on their way from his wingback chair every day. And _that_ meant...that there was only one logically sound conclusion he could reach.

If that convict had blown up himself and whomever else was in his proximity once, he was fully capable of doing it again. What was to stop him from lighting up the Persephone lunch line? The infirmary? The body of the next lab tech who was unfortunate enough to give him his next dose of EVE? 

Visions of lawsuits and collateral damage worse than that which Frankie was likely about to inflict on him danced through his head. That _thing_ was a breathing, crying liability that put all of the investments he’d worked so hard to secure at risk.

The thought that he should lock him up in solitary, away from any and all assets, employees and opportunities that he could possibly cause damage to drifted feebly through his head. _But what, pray tell, would be the point of that?_ said the facts and figures feverishly running through his head in parallel. It would be a cell - occupied and unusable - for years, a mouth to feed that could contribute nothing in return, a sink for medical costs that would inevitably pop up, a possibly-expensive hole into which the nickels and dimes of profit would fall. 

After he’d made up his mind, he mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, stuffed it in his front pocket and headed back to the two medics, both of whom were watching him with concern as he approached. 

“Alright, boys.” he said in a low voice, sparing only the briefest of glances at the gurney between them. “You...uh...y’all have any…”

He pointed at the case of emergency medical supplies sitting on top of an old speaker.

“Y’all have any morphine in that suitcase?”

One of them stiffened. The dunderhead who’d made the awful joke looked confused. 

“Of...course?” he answered, glancing back at it.

“Well, it sure looks like _he_ ”, Sinclair said, jabbing a thumb towards the gurney without looking at it. “could use some, don’t it?”

The quicker-on-the-uptake one glared at him.

“A heap of it.” he added, flashing a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

He was sweating again. He could feel it soaking through the collar of his custom tailored shirt, making that same fabric cling wetly to his armpits beneath the facade of his jacket. Before going on, he stopped to mop his forehead once more. But when he tried to stuff the handkerchief back in his pocket, his fingers were clumsy and unsteady, a collection of entities beyond his control. The slippery fabric fell through their grasp and he let it drop to the floor without looking down.

“It’d be a kindness.” he said quickly, before his nerves got the better of him. “Why, it’d be _such_ a kindness that I’d...uh...simply _have_ to rehire two such _kind_ , upstanding gentlemen. W-With bonuses, of course. For their...invaluable service. To the company.”

The medics were silent for a moment. The sensible one was making a hard face at the feet of the body in front of him and gripping the railing at the foot of the gurney as though it were the only thing holding him up. The other one scratched the back of his head. It must’ve helped in some way, because the instant after he did it, his jaw dropped to the floor.

“You want us to _kill_ him?” he blurted out.

Everyone except the one who’d spoken winced.

“Now see _here_ ”, he went on, taking a step towards Sinclair. “I may not look it, but I’ve got _standards_ and...I’m going to need to know exactly how big a bonus we’re”-

He was not the one who got kicked in the face.

It happened so suddenly, with a force that didn’t seem possible from the dying body in front of them. 

And then the body was more _alive_ than it had any sense being - thrashing, kicking, making inhuman sounds. Sinclair watched, dumbly, when its dirty nails scratched open the other medic’s face as he tried to subdue it. 

Despite himself, Sinclair backed up a step. And then another. And another. Every carefully cultivated survival instinct he had was telling him to flee, to get away from here while he still had the chance, but at the same time, he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“You and your GODDAMN _MOUF_.” the one who’d been kicked shrieked, trying futilely to staunch the flow of blood from his nose.

“Just get - _aaaaaaa_!” the other one screamed, narrowly dodging another swipe to his face. “Just _fucking help_!”

A guard. They needed a guard. Yes, it stood to reason that there had to be a few around here. There’d been a dozen out on the stage not ten minutes ago. It wouldn’t be _fleeing_ , per se, if he ran in the opposite direction to find them.

“ _Augustus_!” an overly friendly voice trilled from behind, the second he’d made his decision. “There you are!”

He spun around to see Dr. Alexander - that soft spoken bore who bent over backwards to get on everybody’s good side, but could never quite disguise his disdain for Sinclair when they spoke - red faced and panting, speeding down the hall towards him. 

“Gil!” Sinclair said cheerily, flashing a forced smile as he came to a screeching halt. “What a...pleasant surprise. Now, to what _exactly_ does little ‘ole me owe the honor of”-

From somewhere behind him, there was a _crunch_ that set his teeth on edge and which was quickly followed by the most agonized screaming he’d heard in his life.

A bead of sweat dripped into his eye. When he reached for his handkerchief, it wasn’t there. So, grimacing as he made the decision, he wiped it off with the sleeve of his five hundred dollar jacket and casually stepped between the scene behind him and Alexander’s line of sight. Alexander craned his neck around curiously.

“Sooo...uh…” Sinclair said, sticking his head in front of Alexander’s and straightening a tie that didn’t need straightening. “What...uh...brings you to my neck of the woods on this...fine day, hm?”

“Oh, just that one.” Alexander said, gesturing behind him. “Five hundred dollars, cash, for him to be delivered, in one piece, to my department.”

There was a wave of garbled screaming from the direction in which he’d pointed, in which the only words that could clearly be heard were “GET IT OFF” and “OH GOD.”

The urge to turn around was strong, but Sinclair’s desire not to know was stronger. 

“ _That_ one?” he enunciated, pointing behind him with his thumb, every muscle in his body struggling to maintain the illusion of having things under control.

Alexander nodded, his head bobbling like the last grape in a bunch, on the end of its stem.

“Oh yes.” he said. “If you’ve no more use for him, that is.”

There was a _pop_ from behind and the screaming turned into no less disturbing crying. 

Alexander was completely nonplussed. He stared at Sinclair, with that infuriating little half smile of his, politely awaiting an answer.

There were quite a few questions on the tip of Sinclair’s that were in that moment, raring to get out. Among them were “Might I offer you a less well-done model?”, “The hell is _wrong_ with you?” and “You ain’t been, say, experimentin’ on yourself lately, have you?”

But then he looked in his eyes. His body language spoke of nonchalance, of not caring what happened one way or the other. But his eyes gleamed feverishly with desire. The sweat he’d worked up from running dripped down his temples. 

This was a man who would pay anything for a one-of-a-kind commodity. The _why_ didn’t matter. Only the opportunity to exploit it that had fallen so generously in his lap.

What came out of Sinclair’s mouth was instead “Eight hundred.”

Alexander stiffened. For a fraction of a second, his smile faltered.

“Five-fifty.” he replied.

“C’mon Gil, be a pal.” Sinclair said, feeling like the cat that had swallowed the canary. “You know I’ve got costs to cover. _This one_ , here? Hardly got a splice on him at all. Truth be told, I reckon I ain’t even turned a profit on him yet.”

Alexander’s eyes narrowed. 

“Oh, come now, Augustus.” he said, his tone not changing in its saccharine sweetness, but his eyes going icy. “You know how tight Frank is with the budget.” 

Sinclair smiled a smile that was more honest than any he’d ever smiled in recent memory. It was such a relief to be his old self again, pulling every trick in the book for the sole purpose of fleecing a fool for all he’s worth.

“Ah, but this one’s real _quality_.” he went on, laying it on perhaps a little thicker than strictly necessary. “You don’t see a lot of his like in this market. We’ve been getting less dissenters coming in, did you know?”

That was a lie. Was he sharp enough to know the difference? From the look on his face, the answer appeared to be “no.”

“Ryan’s about finished cleaning house for the time being. Why, it won’t be long ‘til everyone I’ve got in there is spliced halfway to Sunday and I’m running low on product. You know how it is. I don’t mean nothing by it. I’m _always_ doing the best I can for you folks in the labs, given what I got to work with. Right, Gil?”

“I’ve got him!” a medic yelled. “Get the - gah! The _syringe_! I can’t”-

Alexander gave him a pained look.

“Six-fifty.” he said, with resignation. “That’s it. I can’t go any higher.”

Sinclair sucked in air through his teeth and flashed him an equally pained look.

“Oh, you’re making it hard for ol’ Sinclair. But…”

He stopped to think for a moment.

“Word I’ve been hearing ‘round the block is that your little department’s building some kinda...bodyguarding machine. Well, I want one. When it’s done, of course. No need to rush it on my account. Things ain’t as safe as they used to be around here and I, for one, will always welcome a smidgen more insurance in these…”

Something made of glass shattered behind him and was quickly followed by a “ _Shit_!”

“...troubled times.” he finished.

“Mr. _Sinclair_ ” Alexander said wearily, enunciating every syllable of his name. “I fear, at this juncture, that your request is quite impossible. However...”

He looked off into the distance like he was calculating figures in his head.

“ _Should_ my project succeed, you, I guarantee, would be first in my thoughts. Would this be an arrangement to your satisfaction?”

“Hmm.” Sinclair said, exaggeratedly tapping his toe as he thought about it. 

It seemed as though he was butting up to the attempting-to-get-blood-from-a-stone phase of negotiations. It was a much flimsier deal than he was normally comfortable with, but if he didn’t make this sale, right here, right now, the truth was that he would salvage nothing at all from this mess. He’d played his cards without showing his hand as long as he could. It was time to fold.

He stuck out his hand and flashed the smile that’d been more expensive than his suit and even more useful in sealing deals. Alexander looked at him with undisguised shock.

“I’ll take it.” he said. “But I _would_ prefer it be in writin’ by this time tomorrow.”

“Well!” Alexander said, seizing his hand and giving it a firm shake. “I am _certainly_ able to arrange that. Oh, and…might it be possible for your clinic to send blood samples from the...ahem… _subject_ , by the end of the week as well? Biopsies, possibly, if it isn’t too much trouble?”

Sinclair shrugged.

“I don’t see why not. I’ll have my secretary get you in contact with Dr. Grimes, on the double.”

“Fantastic!” Alexander said, with the most genuine smile he’d ever seen out of him. “Now, if you’d excuse me, I have quite a bit of work I’ve been neglecting to do.”

“Oh, of course.” Sinclair said, waving goodbye as he practically skipped away. “Nice chattin’ with you too.”

"Boys! It’s time to"- Sinclair squawked, turning to the medics and abruptly stopping in his tracks. 

One of them had his cash cow in a headlock. The other had twisted his one remaining good arm behind him and was attempting - while not quite being able to see the underside of the arm - to locate a vein with a needle of what he assumed was the morphine. There was an impressive amount of black eyes and ragged scrapes all around. The one doing the headlock appeared to be missing the tip of a finger. 

“ _Boys_!” he said, with more indignity. Both of them jumped, then glanced up. The body growled like an angered predator and wriggled in their grasp, but did not succeed in breaking free. 

“Would you pack up the dog and pony show and get a move on?” he said, planting his mostly-dry hands on his hips. “We’ve got a train to catch.”

“Wha...what?” one of them asked, the needle still poised over his cash cow’s naked skin. 

“You heard me. Up and at ‘em. He’s got a new lease on life and we’re running late. Chop-chop.”

“But...you said...the bonus...is it...”

“Ugh.”

Sinclair rolled his eyes.

“I don’t know what y’all _thought_ I said, but you’ll _get_ your bonus if you get him to the train without losin’ any more fistfights to a one armed invalid. Come on, now.”

-

Delgado trudged into his cell, not bothering to spare another look for the guard who’d escorted him back. The lock _CLANGED_ shut behind him, echoing horrendously down the block in the stillness of the night. It was a sound he’d heard so often that it barely registered as a sound at all anymore, but for a moment, he was thrust back into the body of the person he’d been when he’d first arrived, who’d jumped every time a cell clanged shut down the row and who had lain awake for hours every time it had wrenched him from his already disturbed slumber. There was nothing he could have done about the noise of his door, but he hoped his return to what passed for society down here hadn’t disturbed too many sleepers who hadn’t yet become inured to it.

Another patient had been rushed with dire speed into the infirmary in the small hours of the night. He’d stumbled in, half supported by the guard who was escorting him, vomited blood on the floor and immediately started screaming thereafter. Delgado had conceded that he probably needed the bed more than him. And so, here he was, back within the grey walls of the small world he spent his days in, as though nothing at all had changed since he’d left.

He felt unwell. The room still spun if he stood up too quickly. He was constantly seeing spots in front of his eyes and the trek back to D Block had taken more out of him than he’d expected. If it was going to be like this for a while, he had no idea how he was going to manage in the laundry room. 

But that was a worry he’d decided to put on hold for the time being. He settled down on his old, reliably hard bunk, being careful of his still-healing injuries and closed his eyes. He touched the bandage on his neck as he drifted off, still, days later, not quite believing that he’d been a literal inch from death and lived to tell the tale. They hadn’t even needed to bother with stitches.

An hour or so later, he woke up with a numb leg. With a disaffected grunt, he shifted over to the other side. Feeling came back in pins and needles. He wiggled his toes, waiting for the pain to lessen so he could drift off again. And then he’d repeat the process, as needed, all through the night. It was about as normal a sleep cycle as a person could get around here. 

Unless, of course, there were options.

He opened his eyes and peered over at the other side of the cell. The faint red light of the exit sign illuminated the empty bunk, the blanket still wrinkled as though its occupant had slid out for a toilet break only a moment ago. 

He hadn’t made his bed that morning, an eternity ago. That was how Delgado had guessed something was wrong. Well, among other tells. But the bed was the most obvious one. He’d had a celly who had been practically religious about making his bed - on the good days that is. Delgado could understand that. It was the one little corner of any of their lives that they had any kind of control over. Neglecting that control tended to bode ill.

For a few minutes, Delgado lay there, half expecting him to come back any minute and chastise him for even thinking about snatching his mattress pad. But of course the bunk remained empty and _of course_ he was still gone - he’d been in much worse shape, after all. No surprises there.

What was strange was that he hadn’t seen him in the infirmary. And when he’d asked the nurses questions, all they’d given him were vague, cagey answers. What he’d stubbornly decided to believe was that he’d been shipped to a facility in the Penthouse for special treatment.

But even as he thought it, he knew the idea sounded ridiculous. Thinking on it even a little was like pulling a thread from an unraveling sweater. He’d seen people in much worse shape hauled back from the brink of death by the medical staff in the Basement’s own chop shop, whether they wanted to be or not. They’d patched up burns aplenty. They had definitely taken care of stabbings (too many of them, really). _His_ case should not have been something new.

Forcibly, he pushed the discomfort that had been building in his head, like pressure in a balloon, to the side. It was too late to bear thinking about. Right now, what he needed to focus on were a few hours of quality sleep. He was bound to feel better about it in the morning

Surely _he_ wouldn’t mind if he borrowed his mattress pad for just one night. Just until he got back. He wouldn’t even protest if a guard had to jab him in the back with a billy club to get it back.

With a groan, he rolled out of bed. His leg didn’t quite have full feeling yet, but doggedly, he limped to the other side of the room, fighting both dizziness and the whims of his own, disobedient leg. At the last second, the leg protested its treatment by crumpling beneath him. He fell to his knees, catching himself on the edge of the bunk. 

As he knelt there, catching his breath, one hand full of blanket and the other resting on the cool expanse of the mattress pad itself, the feeling of loss hit him all at once. 

The cell was so _empty_ \- emptier than he’d thought it was possible to be, quieter than should be possible, darker than any light could reach. 

And he was alone. 

The thoughts that he’d tried so hard to suppress - the dark ones, the ones that rang alarm bells in his head, the ones that _knew_ that he wasn’t going to be coming back - came bubbling with vengeance to the surface of his mind. 

As did the ones that chanted, over and over in his head, that it was all his fault.

When he could stand again, he got up, went back to his own bunk and laid down on his sack-of-rocks mattress without disturbing the spare.

-

Samuel slammed the three-inch thick steel door of the cell he’d scrambled out of and hurriedly drew the lock, his heart racing, the vial of blood he swore he almost died to get every other night clenched in his white-knuckled grip. A surge of anger flared up in him when he saw that the guard he _supposed_ he considered a friend had his back to the cell and was heavily engrossed in the contents of a magazine which seemed to have an awful lot of women in swimsuits but very little in the way of swimming.

“The hell is _this_!” Samuel yelled, jerking it out of his hands.

“Hey…” Jamie said, pouting. “Sammy, c’mon.”

“Don’t you _dare_ ‘Sammy’ me. I tell ya to keep an eye peeled in case Mr. Piranha-jaws in there gets it in his head to take another chomp out of me and _what do you do_? Huh?”

He waved the magazine in his face and then thrust it angrily into the middle shelf of his cart. As he did so, he noticed that one of the bandages on his fingers had been torn. At least there was no blood this time. He made a mental note to fix it once he had everything stowed away.

“We-ell, it was so _boring_ out here.” Jamie said indignantly, looking as petulant as a prison guard with a .38 on his hip could be. He reached for the magazine. “You know how it is! And I didn’t hear _too_ much screaming, so…”

Samuel made a sound of disgust in his throat as he slapped his hand away.

“Sam”-

“Fuck off. You know what I have to _deal_ with to get this?”

He held up the vial of blood and swirled it threateningly before situating it in its cooler and snapping it shut. 

“Or-or getting all _those_ inside a body that wants less than nothing to do with ‘em?”

He gestured to the tray of crumpled paper pill cups and empty syringes. The medical tape was just beneath the mess. He reached for it carefully, doing his best not to prick himself, despite how badly his hands were still shaking.

Jamie scoffed.

“With the mugs _I’ve_ seen you give lumps to? It can’t possibly be that big of a…”

He trailed off when Samuel glared at him, held up his bandaged hand and with unflinching eye contact, used his other, equally bandaged hand to wrap the tip of his finger in a fresh strip of medical tape. 

“Jamie.” Samuel said softly. “D’you wanna know how many makeshift weapons we keep digging up in the mattress in there? Hmm? D’you wanna hear about the time he just about took Grimes’ finger _clean off_? Or how about the fact that he pulls his stitches out on the _daily_ , with nary a flinch to be seen? Or...oh, I know! You’ll _like_ this one. The second he starts growing new skin on the arm that’s got none, he _scrapes it off_ , with whatever goddamn tool he’s made from plastic tubes and a screw he jimmied out of his own bedframe. Nice, huh?”

Jamie made a face. He didn’t comment as Samuel dug out the medical chart and penciled in the small victories he’d managed to accomplish without dying tonight. Cryptically, under “Patient”, there was only a drawing of a triangle.

Was Jamie really a friend? He wasn’t sure sometimes. The man outright refused to get his name right no matter how many times he corrected him, seemed to know exactly when he had a mound of patient files to go through and repeatedly chose that specific time to bother him, was usually the one behind ideas as bad as stowing a body in a mop closet until morning (that’d been a fun one to explain to the cleaning detail) and…

On pain of possibly losing his job, had saved his life without hesitation. Asshole.

“Ooh!” Samuel went on after he’d finished up with the chart. “Y’know what else? I almost forgot the best part.”

“And...what’s that?” Jamie asked, with some trepidation.

Samuel picked up one of the empty syringes and held it up. The paper label read _LETHEVEC_ in plain, blocky lettering.

“This - they send it _special_ from upstairs, after Grimes gave ‘em an earful about missing fingers and plastic tube shanks. They said it’s ‘sposed to calm him down, but, uh…”

He let out a hysterical laugh and dropped on the tray with a clatter.

“It doesn’t work! In statement of fact, I’d say it pisses him off _even more_. I gotta save it for last or I’m not getting a damn thing else in him. I ask Grimes what the hell the _point_ is but he tells me to ‘keep on until it takes effect.’ Well, I’ve been ‘keeping on’ and...oh, I’m sorry, am I boring you?”

Jamie finished his yawn.

“Whuh?” he asked sleepily. “Uh. Possibly. You know I don’t get into the...medical-like stuff. In one ear and out the other. Heh.”

“The hell d’you stick around for, then?”

“Iunno. Nothin’ better to do this hour of the night. Not like there’s a whole lot of riots to break up when everyone’s locked up. With you I get sleepwalkers at least.”

He winked. Samuel groaned. He was never going to let him live that down. He could see it now - years later, there’d they still be, stuck in each other’s company, Jamie still dangling his goddamn life debt over his head.

Samuel tucked the chart back into the cart, did a quick once-over to make sure everything else was secure and set off in the direction of the infirmary. Jamie strolled along, trying to whistle but doing a terrible job of it.

“The point I was trying to make…” Samuel said, interrupting him, in a more serious tone.

“Hold the fuckin’ phone, there’s a _point_?” Jamie said, with what might be construed as an evil grin.

“Shut up.”

“You miss out on your coffee or”-

“The fuckin’ point is that I think he _knows._ ” 

Jamie gave him the side eye.

“Who knows the what now?”

“ _Mr. No-Name!_ ” he said just a little too loudly in the quiet corridors, jabbing a finger at the chart. “I think he knows where he’s headed.”

“Oo-kay. And that means fuck-all becau”-

“He’s going upstairs. Permanently. After he’s healthy enough to move.”

“Oh.”

They walked in silence for a beat.

“So, you...uh, ask him?” Jamie asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What the - _hell_ no! You ask a shark if he’s about to turn you into chum? But...the reason I’m thinkin’ he _knows_...is that _if_ he knows, then he _knows_ that there’s nothing we can possibly do to him that compares to what _they’re_ going to do up _there_. And if he _knows_ that…”

“This rabbit hole goin’ anywhere?”

“...then what are we to him but dead meat? Don’t turn your back on that hole...is the point. Not that I give a damn or anything, but, the way things are headed...someone’s getting hurt. Worse than Grimes did, that is. I’d rather it wasn’t your goddamn mug.”

They’d arrived at the infirmary door. Jamie, for once, was quiet. For a moment he stood there, looking as though his brain were genuinely trying to process something that required previously untapped brainpower. 

Then he made a daring dive, snatched his magazine off the cart and tore off down the hall giggling madly. When he’d gotten far enough away that he wasn’t in danger of losing the magazine again, he spun on his heel, yelled “Smell ya later, Sammy!” and promptly vanished around a corner.

“Yeah, you fuck off too.” Samuel muttered under his breath.

He turned backwards, nudged the door open with his heel and pulled the cart through. It only got a little stuck on the divider this time. The contents of the cart rattled, but nothing fell.

But goddamn _Wilson_ was already awake anyway. Samuel caight the glint of his too-wide glasses as he turned his head to look at him, from his bed near the window he so loved to stare out. He couldn’t remember having ever seen the man ever sleep since he’d been admitted. He was always sitting there. Goggling. Observing. Calculating.

For a brief moment Samuel was tempted to yell “LIGHTS OUT” and clock him good, but decided that it wasn’t worth waking the rest of the ward, as funny and satisfying as it would have been.

He pulled up a stool, sat down at the surgery table that served as his makeshift desk and settled in to get through his paperwork.

-

He remembered, out of everything he’d forgotten, his own name included, that he’d been upset about something. Mortally upset. Upset enough to kill, to burn, to drag whoever got in the way down to the grave with him.

But what exactly that something was - whenever he tried to think on it, it was like touching a piece of machinery in the darkness. He could feel the curves of the pipes, the smooth, hard teeth of what might have been a gear, the sharpness of a seam that hadn’t quite been filed down. He could touch and conjecture and get a vague general feeling of what its purpose might have been, but the meat of it and the light switch that would have revealed everything - gone, as though it had never existed.

It had been important. He still knew that much. He couldn’t have been that upset if he hadn’t cared. He couldn’t have felt this much despair, this anger, this _wrath_ , if he hadn’t first loved.

So he clung to the feeling of it, to the pain the empty space had left in its wake, like a scab ripped out of a wound, as though it was the only thing in the world that mattered. When he felt himself starting to forget, he would hurt himself to remember. To put the pain on the outside, to make it visible - _real_. A thing that couldn’t be taken away, like everything else. 

When they tried to take it (and they always did), he would hurt _them_ instead. He could dislocate his one working wrist to get out of restraints. He saved every last piece of garbage they neglected to take back with them when they fled his cell and turned it into shivs and shanks. He sank his teeth into every person who dared to shove a pill down his throat. He hit and kicked and punched and slashed and stabbed until there were too many people holding him down to move.

He had the vague notion that he’d killed someone that way. The details were murky - like looking down into a pool of muddy water, trying to discern the shapes on the bottom. He couldn’t remember what the night nurse had said, that evening when he’d stomped in alone, a pair of pliers in hand. Only the hurt in his voice and the anger in his eyes. And the taste of blood in his mouth after. And the inescapable feeling of having lost something. He was almost certain that he hadn’t seen the nurse since then.

Still, other ones came, with more needles, more pills, more of those syringes that burned holes in his mind every time they pumped another dose into his veins. He fought and kicked and screamed and cried whenever they brought that one out. Its pale yellow liquid was something he could not forget, no matter how much of it was inside him. 

But they always succeeded in the end. And he would lay there in the dark, sobbing as it took effect, as it made the shadows deeper, as he felt himself drifting farther and farther away from the shapes in the dark that had once been so important.

And then, one day, he woke up and realized that he felt nothing at all. 

He had the vaguest of recollections that he’d been angry at something. That he’d been in pain for a long time. That the pain was a thing he’d clung to, that he’d fed on. But that all sounded so ridiculous now. Why hold on to something so awful, when he could be nothing and no one and be at peace? Why had he fought so hard and so long for a prize of such negative worth?

He relaxed in the darkness of his cell and breathed, the weight on his chest that had been there for an eternity, gone. No ghosts stirred in the darkness. No more monsters haunted his dreams.

-

Delgado kicked his heels against the couch in the newly installed art room impatiently. He felt twitchy today. Restless. That was probably to be expected. He’d always been nervous at doctor’s appointments. There was something about near-strangers poking and prodding at him and telling him that there was something wrong with him that would never be anything but inherently uncomfortable. But the crude painting of a person screaming on the wall opposite him wasn’t helping much.

He jumped in his seat when the door swung open and an inmate he’d never met before trotted out. It was getting so hard to keep up with all the new ones. They were like a shifting, amorphous kaleidoscope of faces that never stayed the same for more than a moment. And what did Delgado do? He remained. He stayed the same, though everything was crumbling, morphing and shifting beneath his feet. Or, he _had_ , until recently. That was the entire reason he was here, after all.

The man was carrying what appeared to be a likeness of a butterfly crafted out of papier mache. When he saw Delgado eying it, he smiled at him and nodded as though they had shared a private thought. Delgado gave him a blank stare in return.

The door he’d come out of was open a crack. For a moment, Delgado regarded it as though it were a yawning chasm or an alleyway you didn’t go down after dark. Then he gathered up his courage, heaved himself off the couch and made his way towards whatever it was that was going to happen next. Knocking on the door took a smidgen more of scrounged bravery before he could manage it.

“Come in.” a voice answered from behind it. 

The strangeness of hearing a woman’s voice after all this time temporarily stopped him in his tracks. He’d almost forgotten what they sounded like. 

When he stepped inside, it was dim. But not the lonely dimness of his cell or the loud, sweaty dimness of the laundry room. It was more _comforting_ , more...

 _Like stepping into a cocoon_ , came the thought, unbidden. Butterflies on the brain. That was what he had now. Great.

He closed the door behind him and the world outside went away.

“Mr. Delgado-Álvarez, is it?” the woman at the desk asked, offering him a thin-lipped smile. The light of the lone lamp glinted off her horn rimmed glasses.

She looked immaculate. Not a hair out of place. Not a wrinkle to be seen in her uniform. That couldn’t possibly be lipstick, could it?

“Er...just Delgado’s...fine.” he said, trying his best not to stare. “Should I…?”

He gestured vaguely at the empty chair in front of the desk.

“Please do.” she answered, returning his gesture. “That is what we’re here for, after all. Do make yourself comfortable.”

“Thanks.”

He dropped into the chair like a bag of rocks. Every thought that had been in his head prior to that moment exited at top speed. Why had he come here? What was he _doing_? How could he possibly tell this woman half of what he wanted to say? Part of him wanted to spill everything - every last gory detail. But the other part made his tongue heavy, advised him to keep his silence. Silence was safe. Silence was static. If he said nothing, nothing would have to change. If he didn’t speak it into being, nothing was wrong.

Mindlessly, he scratched the inside of his arm. The pinpricks left behind by his recent trips upstairs bothered him more when he was nervous.

“So…” she said, breaking the less than comfortable silence. “You may call me Dr. Lamb. Welcome to my office, such as it is. While I can’t promise you that doctor-patient confidentiality will be respected by our superiors in this environment, I would like you to rest assured that I make every effort to exclude the more...salacious details from my reports. Now, why don’t you start by telling me about yourself?”

It was too broad a question. His brain froze like he’d eaten ice cream too fast as he scrambled for an answer. There was an answer in there, he _felt it_ \- but connecting it to his mouth was another matter.

Lamb waited, watching the struggle on his face without interfering. He felt as though he were stuck under a spotlight again, all eyes on him, waiting for him to fail.

“I’m sorry.” he blurted out, scratching his arm a little harder. “I’m not much for talking about… _feelings_ and all that. I just...I-I don’t know where to start.”

She nodded knowingly, the wispy smile never leaving her face.

“Not an uncommon conundrum. Especially in...this population. The Tyrant reveres silence. How difficult it must be, to speak after being told for so long that it is against the rules.”

Delgado gave her a stare as blank as the one he’d given the guy outside.

Lamb let loose a barely perceptible sigh in return.

“Perhaps this is my fault.” she said, crossing her legs behind her desk. “Why don’t I start with something...simpler? What do you _do_? Did you have a job, past or present?”

“O-oh!” Delgado said, jumping a little in his seat about how easy it was to get an answer out of his head for that one. “I’m a barber. Was. Kind of. Still am? But...not so much...these days.”

He held up his hands. They were trembling - not terribly, but just enough to be a bother - as per usual.

“I’m...not as steady as I used to be.”

He dropped his hands back in his lap.

Lamb nodded sadly and wrote something down in the file in front of her. 

“And this...bothers you?” she asked.

“Well of course it does!” he blurted out, with sudden anger. “You think I wanted to get hit in the head?”

“I did not say that, Mr. Delgado. I merely”-

“You think I wanted to leave my boys behind and-and just _give up_ on running a barbershop together, just like that?”

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking even worse now. And these temper tantrums he’d been inadvertently visiting on every person, total stranger or not, who came into contact with him...

“I’m...sorry.” he said, in a gentler voice. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Oh, there’s no need to apologize.” Lamb said, her eyes glittering behind her glasses. “Do continue.”

He gaped at her in shock for a moment. The words were coming so easy now. They were almost pouring out of his brain, filling his mouth like water.

“It...it was stupid of me, really.” he said. “Ever since I got locked up, I never _really_ thought I’d get out. Not once. But...whenever I was squaring some guy’s neckline, I could _pretend_ , see? I could imagine we were all together. Renato Jr. going through the account book in back, Enrique sweeping up...I-I...it’s so _silly_ , but…”

“It helped you feel close to your sons.” Lamb finished. “No, that isn’t silly at all. We all have our little rituals. We are still, after all these millennia of evolution, social animals. This, for instance...”

She reached up her sleeve and after a small struggle, pulled out a locket attached to a silver chain. When she popped it open and held it under the lamp, he could see a faded picture of a smiling girl with pigtails. 

“It’s strange.” she said. “My daughter’s every feature is engraved into the grooves of my grey matter. I could not forget her face, even if I tried. I _need_ not have anything physical at all to remember her by and I _know_ I am past such things. It would have been easier, had I accepted that. And yet...before I knew I was due to be arrested, I took...great pains...to ensure that her picture would not be taken from my person. It was not my proudest decision, but…”

She looped the chain around her wrist and pushed it back up her arm. 

Delgado smiled at her.

“Here it is, the only thing I own that has any value to me. Now, then, it’s out of my area of expertise, but, seeing as Dr. Grimes seems to have proven unhelpful in these matters, I _do_ know of some exercises that might help with that...”

-

“So Harold skipped out again today, the _fucking_ \- oh, pardon my language.”

“I hear worse every day, Mr. Delgado.” Lamb answered, peering up at him over the tops of her glasses. “Do go on.”

“Right...so I’m _stuck_ in there with Thomas and - uh, no offense to Thomas! He’s great. One of the best friends I ever had! Kept all of us sane when”-

“So you’ve said.”

“Y-yeah… _ahem_. Anyway...he was drunk again. Big surprise, right? But not...in the fun kinda way. He gets too soused and he just...well he just turns _mean_. If Harold’s around, he can kinda _redirect_ him. Trick him into not being so much of a sour pickle. But...he wasn’t there today and...y’know how when Thomas gets rollin’, you can’t just stick out your foot and stop him?”

“I do.”

“Well...he starts ragging on about how I’m so high and mighty on the other side of the partition w-with a...a face that don’t make babies cry and he’s going on about ‘why don’t I just go _over there_ ,’ to...his and Harold’s side - y’know, the...the splicies - like a _real man_ and...get it over with.”

Delgado paused for breath. With frustration, he noticed that his fingers had been scratching away of their own accord at the inside of his arm again. He jerked them away and sat on his hand.

“He hit a nerve, didn’t he?” Lamb asked, steepling her fingers on the desk. “What happened next?”

“I left! The hell am I supposed to say to that? ‘I’m sorry you’re so miserable you gotta pickle yourself into the grave and grab hold of whatever nincompoop is dumb enough to stick around?’ I ain’t _takin’_ that. So. I...I left him. I feel awful about it.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because we...we were friends, once. That’s important. There ain’t a whole lot of us left. I feel like...it’s on me to keep us together. Alive. It’s not like anybody else’s gonna do it, right?”

“Why not?”

“Why _what_?”

“Why does it have to be you?”

“Oh...well, y’know Thomas is turning into a lost cause faster than I can say ‘boo.’ That cough of his is getting worse - has been, for _months_ \- and he just...he don’t care. And Harold...it’s funny. He was the only one of us who ever thought we was gonna get out - _really_ believed it. Damned stubborn guy. There he’d be, coming up with scheme after scheme, every single one of ‘em less likely than me shitting a solid gold train ticket. I...laughed behind his back. Sometimes. Always made sure I was out of earshot.

“ _Ahem_. But...the thing of it was, it kept me going too. Seein’ someone else with...hope, I guess. A person who don’t roll over and play dead until they’re not acting, like everyone else. Until...he didn’t, anymore. He just got quieter and quieter until...he stopped showing up at all. I ain’t seen him in...half a month now, I think. Thomas says he’s still alive - so there is _thatdays_...I’ve seen it before. It...it worries me. I feel like...there’ll be a day when he’ll _really_ be...gone. And I’m the only one with a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping ‘im. Though I...I couldn’t. Before.”

“Hold on.” Lamb said, looking up from her notes. “Before? What do you mean by that?”

Delgado pursed his lips. For a moment, he stared off into space, considering. He’d told her a lot, over the past few weeks. He’d grown to trust her. Adore her, even. And she’d helped him more than he had the words to express. 

But _that_ piece of information? He’d never shared it with anyone. It had remained, for all these months, lodged inside him like a splinter slowly making for his heart. He was going to have to get it out eventually. But did he feel comfortable enough to do it today?

He thought back to the smiling girl with pigtails and all the conversations they’d had on trusting that their faraway children were in good hands.

 _Y’know what?_ , he thought to himself. _Fuck it._

“There were four of us”, Delgado said, his voice suddenly hoarse and strange. “For a little while.”

“In the…”

“In the Pay John Club, yeah. My celly. Moved in after Harold...had to leave. Now he’s… _gone_ and...I’m to blame.”

“Surely he made his own choices. As have Harold and Thomas. You cannot be held accountable for the actions of those who are unable to see beyond themselves.”

“Maybe so, Doc. But...I sure didn’t help.”

He saw her opening her lipsticked mouth to ask another question, to probe a little deeper, to ease it out of him as she was so good at doing, when he pulled his hand out from under his thigh and lifted it up to desk height. For just a moment, as the green gook oozed out of his pores, he saw a flash of fear flit across her face. He felt a little bad that he’d scared her, but at the same time, there was a gleefulness in him that he’d managed to crack her facade for even a moment.

“If I was to hit you with this, Doc and tell you to dance a jig on top of your desk...you’d hop to it like there was nothin’ more important in the world. If I wanted some guard to toss me their keycard? Same deal. If I wanted some asshole to slit his own throat and shut himself up for good? Well…”

“That’s...all very impressive, Mr. Delgado, now if you would _please_ ”-

“What I’m trying to say is that it could’ve saved him. My celly. Hell, there’d be two more guys up and about if I hadn’t screwed the pooch. Assholes, both of ‘em, but...they didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that.”

“Mr. Delgado, this is a clinical environment and I am _asking_ you...to…”

She trailed off when he sucked it back into his hand and crossed his arms.

“Well.” she said, relaxing a little and putting her unflappably serene face back on. “Thank you for...that. Now, you were saying that it could have...saved him?”

Delgado looked off into space for a moment.

“Yeah.” he said softly. “It was them against us in the Plasmid Theater. Not by choice. I...didn’t know what I had. It was such a mess. So...it was more like two against one. He held them off while I...messed up. 

“The second we finally figure out what the damn thing is, y’know what happens? I get my block knocked off. Boom. Say bye-bye to barbering. When I come to, he’s hanging off the other guy, stopping him from...I don’t know. But I’ve got a clear shot, I’m taking aim and…”

He touched his neck absentmindedly.

“I just wasn’t fast enough.”

He was silent for a long time. Lamb just sat there staring at him. Sitting with him until he was ready.

“I think...he thought I was dead and...just couldn’t take it anymore. Ya gotta understand, he would’ve done _anything_ for me. He half killed a guy once because he...well, because I got a sprained ankle on account of him. He was so _angry_ , seeing me laid up. Always going off about how it shouldn’t have happened, why can’t that asshole just mind his business, yada-ya. Y’know. Then the guy himself picks a fight with him and...that’s all it took. 

“I don’t know why he was like that. I _told_ him, right off the bat, ‘when they come for me, ya gotta look after yourself.’ Of course we’re not leaving each other up the creek without a paddle. Comrades stick together! We made our...home, in here, as best we could. But...

“There’s got to be a line, right? If he’s gonna hurt himself or somebody else on my account, _I don’t want it_. Never wanted it! I wouldn’t...god, I wouldn’t be so goddamn _pissed_ if he’d just...well, I should finish the story first, shouldn’t I?

“I come to _again_ and the whole stage’s on fire. The...guy he was holding onto burnt to a crisp and the next about to join the barbeque. I...think a lot about what would’ve happened if I’d gotten over there in time to stop him. If I’d...slipped him a dose of my little friend here and given ‘im strict orders to cool his heels.

“To be honest, I don’t _like_ usin’ the thing. It makes me kinda sick, knowing it exists out there, in the world. That...I have that kinda power. That anyone does. But, in this case...I could’ve stopped it. I could’ve”-

“Renato.” Lamb said, stopping him cold. “Take a moment to listen to yourself. You were placed in a situation over which you had no control, whose odds were far from in your favor, alongside a _clearly_ disturbed partner and you were - to put a cherry on top of the sundae - afflicted with a traumatic brain injury. Do you _truly_ think you could have changed the outcome? Or are you so adverse to speaking ill of your so-called ‘friends’ that you refuse to see the root of your problem for what it is? Tell me, Renato...who is the person to whom your ire _rightly_ belongs?”

Delgado gawped at her for a second, then hung his head.

“I just…” he said. “I just wish he’d trusted me.”

His hands were shaking again. Whether it was because of his brain or the withdrawal cravings he’d been dealing with all week, he couldn’t be sure. Lamb reached over and took hold of one. Her fingers were long and cool. He could just see the glint of the chain hidden beneath her sleeve. 

“How wonderful it would be” she said gently. “Were this world not ruled by egos run amok. But I harbor no belief that it _has_ to be that way.”

She flipped his hand over and lifted her palm up to reveal a delicately crafted papier mache butterfly inside. Delgado stared at it, wonderingly. His hand closed around it, as carefully as though he were holding a real one.

“If what I have said interests you, bring this back to me at our next appointment. If not, no harm done and we’ll never speak of it again. Now, since we have a few minutes before this session is over, how are you doing with your exercises?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Fun Fact: I beg you, take a guess as to what I, answering as Devon, got on an MBTI test which I went into having no conscious knowledge of what the end result would be. Surprise! It’s…
> 
> ISFJ-T or...Protector. Real world personality typing says there’s no escape. ;u;
> 
> \- Delgado earnestly believes that had the telekinetic guy not almost killed him, he would have thrown his ball at Alves and told him to go fuck himself. Aaaaaaaand, that's how you get the theater closed down for an entirely different reason.
> 
> \- Mind the spoilers in the comments!


	12. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The only thing we can do is our best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: suicidal ideation.

**Rapture, New Year’s Eve 1958**

Delgado hesitated before the shop window, thinking back on how it had been to have a shop of his own. How hard he’d worked to keep it presentable, how clean he’d kept the floors, how quickly he’d gone out there with a rag and bucket, should the slightest smudge appear on the window. How proud he’d been, to have a place of his own, for the short time it had lasted. He had to assume that this shop owner felt the same. And yet…

Behind the window, there were hypodermic needles on velvet pillows and vials of plasmids presented as though they were bottles of luxury liquor. The sight of them aroused a rage in him that words could not have contained. 

“Hey”, Louie said, reaching for the pipe in his hands. “If you ain’t gonna - _whoa_!”

He jumped when Delgado let out an eardrum shattering whoop and smashed the shop’s window in. The shards of flying glass caught the color of the neon lights as they soared, in the nigh-magical instant before gravity took over. Then time resumed, it seemed, at twice the speed. The alarm from within was screeching loud enough to alert the entire neighborhood and Delgado was suddenly seized with terror at the thought of getting caught _here_ , of all places, after everything they’d been through. The pipe slipped from his sweaty, trembling hands and heedless of the broken glass or the points of the needles he was stuffing in his pockets, he fell upon whatever was closest to him. The others followed suit, stuffing things in their pockets and down their shirts, tearing apart the display like a pack of hyenas devouring an antelope. He almost didn’t hear the whirring of the fast-approaching robot.

“Heads up!” Jesenski screamed, once again proving his salt as a lookout. 

Delgado hit the deck, his hands over his head. A spray of bullets crashed through what remained of the shop window above him. The thought that the next volley wasn’t going to miss flashed across his mind and then-

Nothing - save for the crackle of electricity and the _thud_ of something heavy hitting pavement. And Louie screaming in perfect harmony with the alarm. 

“ _Lou_!” he yelled, scrambling to his knees, his head spinning when he sat up too fast. “Are you”-

Louie’s arm was covered in blood. Delgado couldn’t see his face through the welding mask he’d grabbed some ways back. Before he could get another word out, he shoved Delgado to the side, grabbed the pipe he’d dropped and - his screaming unabated - took off running at the smoking box that had just tried to kill them. 

Louie smashed the fallen robot with the pipe over and over again, snapping off the helicopter blades, shattering its lights, denting its metal body as though it were only aluminum foil beneath his blows. There was no way it was getting back up, but still he beat it, his screaming having made the seamless transition from that of pain to rage at some point in the process. 

Jesenski watched from a distance, his misshapen face pale, his brow creased with worry and fear. His hand, dangling at his side, was still sparking with electricity. Delgado met his eyes and swore he felt the same thought pass between them.

SportBoost was a hell of a thing. He was glad Louie was on their side. 

“He-ey!” Jesenki said, turning off the plasmid with a flick of his wrist and glancing at something over his shoulder. “We gotta amscray, folks. Move! _Louie_! Snap out of it!”

“Uh...uh?” Louie said, looking at the pipe in his hand as though he’d never seen it in his life.

Delgado paused to help Naledi off the floor. She took his hand, smiled up at him with her crooked lips, then stuck the party blower she’d picked up from a prison guard breakroom in her mouth and blew. The paper tube struck the end of his nose. He made what must have been a funny face and she dashed away, laughing madly.

Delgado laughed just as madly as he charged after her. He whooped and hollered for the sheer joy of hearing his voice echo back at him. He smiled at nothing but the wind in his hair and the feeling of pavement flying beneath his feet. 

“Whew!” he said, panting and sweaty as he collapsed onto a metro system bench. When he closed his eyes, he could see spots. “Can’t do that again.”

He had no idea how she managed it, but Naledi blew what was clearly a worried note at him. It set him chuckling all over again. 

A few minutes later, Louie and a harried-looking Jesenski stumbled into the station. Louie had a rumpled shirt hanging over his arm that was marginally less bloody than the one he was wearing. Without a word, he set his pipe aside, sat on the ground, peeled off his old one and began ripping it into strips to bandage his bloodied arm. When he was dressed, his makeshift bandages hidden under his sleeve, it looked as though nothing at all had happened. Besides whatever had put the other bloodstains on the new shirt. With Louie, you got used to not asking. 

Delgado consoled himself by steadfastly believing that whatever bastard had gotten on the wrong end of Louie’s pipe probably deserved it. From what he’d seen, they were _all_ bastards up here. Could not knowing about the prison possibly absolve them of what they’d built on the back of it? He wasn’t sure. Philosophy had never been his strong suit. Besides, he needed to keep his head on more practical things tonight. 

“Hey”, Naledi said, nudging him with her elbow. “What’d you get?” She’d unzipped the collar of her jumpsuit a few inches and was pulling out what appeared to be an entire foil-wrapped foot long sub. 

“Oh! Right...” Delgado said, jumping back to attention. 

“Yeah!” Jesenski added, gesturing to the growing pool of supplies on the metro station floor. “Pony up, comrade.”

“Hang on, lemme see…” he mumbled, reaching into his pocket. “ _Fuck_!”

He jerked his hand out, sucked the bead of blood off the tip of his finger and tried again with the proper caution due to a pocket full of hypodermic needles.

A train with seaweed caught in its grille pulled into the station while they were divvying up the goods and disgorged a handful of wary looking people. They gave the group a wide berth, but none of them seemed to be in a rush to report their presence to the stationmaster. 

“We’ll be sittin’ ducks for twenty more minutes.” Naledi warned in a low voice, eyeing the doors of the train.

“I know.” Jesenski whispered. “But not without _her_.”

“And if she don’t show?” Louie said huffily, his voice muffled behind his mask.

“Fellas, she’s got the map.” Delgado argued, with a nervous smile. “She’ll make it. Now, are we gonna redistribute that sandwich or what?”

The doors slid shut and the train left the station. Jesenski messily carved up the sandwich with his pocket knife and handed the portions around. It was smushed and a little warmer than Delgado would have liked, but the lettuce was still crisp and the tomatoes, fresh. It tasted all the better for being the first thing he’d eaten in a long time in complete freedom, outside the confines of Persephone.

“Whosh Atlass?” Jesenski said, his mouth still full of sandwich as he pointed at something behind Delgado. 

Delgado popped the last bite into his mouth and turned around to see what it was. Behind him was a poster that someone had tried and failed to tear off the wall. The only thing on it was the question _WHO IS ATLAS?_ He’d seen a few of its like during their dash through the city. But there were so many odd things he’d seen tonight that a cryptic poster hardly qualified as a thing worth thinking about. He swallowed and turned back around.

“The hell ya askin’ me for?” he said, balling up the wad of foil in his hand and tossing it at Jesenski. It bounced off his head satisfyingly. Louie sniggered.

“A telly show?” Naledi offered, shrugging.

“Eh.” Delgado answered. “Makes as much sense as anything.”

“Hokay!” Jesenski said, once the sandwich was gone. “I’m counting one EVE hypo for each of us. We’ve got two med hypos left after Louie didn’t”-

Louie grunted ominous from behind the mask he’d lowered the second he’d finished eating.

“Er, _made use_ of one.” he finished, diplomatically. “So what I’m thinkin’ is - _Doc_!”

Delgado’s glance shot over to the direction he was beaming in and his own expression followed suit. 

“ _Doc!_ ” Jesenski called out under his breath, waving subtly to get her attention. “ _Over here!_ ”

Lamb caught the hint and looking this way and that, her hand in her bag, she strolled over with far too obvious caution. It was jarring to see her under the full fluorescent lights of the station, so far from the cocoon in which they’d spun their plans. Out here, she seemed smaller, somehow. More vulnerable. More human. 

Then again, she wasn’t the one who could make their pursuers turn around and go right on back where they’d come from, now was she? 

“Take a load off, Doc.” Delgado said, hopping to his feet and offering her his seat when she approached. “There’s a couple minutes left before we bail.”

She shifted her bag to her lap and half-collapsed onto the bench with much less grace than he’d ever seen her display. Delgado smiled as the locket - hanging at last in its rightful place around her neck - caught the lights overhead as she went down. 

She _was_ human. Not some distant legend of a leader who only lived in stories or on the other end of a news feed, but flesh and blood. A person who had lost as much as any of them and had labored just as hard to get it back for all of them. 

Tonight, they were paying her back for all she'd done.

“Pep bar?” Delgado asked, patting his back pocket to be sure it was still there before pulling it out. “You’re...uh, you’re looking a little peaky, Doc.”

It must have broken in half when he sat on it and the wrapper was torn. He was slightly embarrassed to offer such a sad piece of nourishment to another person, let alone _her_ , who deserved so much better. To his great relief, she smiled at him and took it from his outstretched hand anyway.

“Thank you, Renato.” she said, taking her hand out of the bag to rip it open along the tear that was already there.

Delgado leaned against the patch of wall beside her and stuck his hands in his needle-free pockets.

“We’ll find her.” he said, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. “You can count on that.”

She smiled at him again, her mouth full of pep bar.

“Anyhow, what I was _thinkin’_ ”, Jesenski continued. “Is that Lamb gets one of the med hypos and we roshambo for the other. All in favor, say”-

“Do we have any ADAM?” Louie cut in, his mask unreadable, but his body language quite clear.

Jesenski gulped on air. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and through his scraggly eyebrow.

“Yes, yes, we’ve got ADAM.” he said quickly, pulling a hypo out of the pile and offering it to him. “Here. All yours. But the next one’s Delgado’s. Got it?”

Louie was already jabbing it into his arm by the time he reached the ultimatum bit and thus, completely ignored the question. A groan of pure bliss escaped from beneath the mask and Delgado glared at him with a hatred surpassing that which he’d felt at the shop window. Snapping himself out of it was almost a physical effort. He closed his eyes for a moment and told himself that there’d be plenty more shop windows to smash before the night was up.

Louie was too preoccupied to bother participating in the contest for the last med hypo. Between the three of them, Naledi won handily. She grinned when her scissors nipped at his paper and Delgado had to admit, he didn’t feel too bad about that loss.

There was a rumbling on the tracks by the time they had finished packing up. In the midst of the hustle to appear as presentable as a pack of pipe-wielding convicts can be, Jesenski tugged Delgado to the side.

“Here.” he said, covertly pressing another hypo into the palm of his hand. “It’s a spare Electro Bolt. I was gonna pass it along to a chum back in the basement, but...it’s yours now. Fair?”

“Huh.” Delgado said, glancing at the cartoony lightning bolts on the label before tucking it into his pocket. “Always did want to try that.”

Another memory surfaced at the mention of the name, but by the time the train rolled into the station, he’d put it out of his head.

-

The train window was covered with handprints and greasy smears, but the distant riot of light from the ritzier parts of the city shone through regardless. Delgado stared out through the depths, his body swaying gently with the motion of the train, his mind alive with imaginings of the parties that must be going on out there tonight.

He smiled to himself at the thought that no matter how grand the venue or pricey the hors d'oeuvres, none of it likely compared to the shindig currently erupting in the deepest depths of Persephone. He hoped the kitchen wouldn’t be too thoroughly destroyed by the time they got back. 

Part of him regretted missing it. Didn’t he deserve a little celebration after all those months of plotting and planning and eaten notes that gave him indigestion like he wouldn’t believe? Sure he did. But he also understood that that was the exact reason why it _had_ to be tonight. Who’d notice one little girl snatched out from under their noses when all eyes were on the clock? With any luck, no one. 

His one true regret was that they’d missed out on offing the Big Man himself. The takeover of Persephone had been coordinated to coincide with his end of the year inspection. Security always turned tighter than normal when he was around, but all that had meant was that the ones outside the Know had less of a reason to see it coming. 

Surprisingly - or so he would have thought a year ago - it had been a largely nonviolent affair. There was nothing simpler for Lamb than getting people on her side. Grimes, a good chunk of the medical staff, the most dissatisfied among the guards and most astonishing of all, _Weir himself_ \- all of them had fallen under her sway and taken up their positions when she gave the order. 

There had been pockets of resistance here and there, but the most significant fight had been between an attack squad high on smuggled EVE and long-smouldering rage, against Sinclair’s honor guard. It was his goddamn freakish bodyguard that had ruined the whole thing. That creature had damn near killed a couple of their number before Louie cracked its helmet like a pinata. Or so he’d been bragging for days. The other ones present had insisted it was more of a group effort. 

Delgado wasn’t able to verify that one way or another. He’d been hot on Sinclair’s heels while it was happening, hurling ball after ball of mind control mucus at the moving target of his back. He’d never wanted to kill anyone so badly in his life. For all his squeamishness, he would’ve taken the broken half of a pair of scissors in his pocket to his throat himself and _enjoyed_ it. 

But Sinclair had dodged. Or maybe it was his aim that was the matter. The things he remembered with greatest clarity was the feeling of his fist on the train window as it pulled out of the prison station and the hoarseness in his throat that had endured long after he’d stopped shouting at it. 

But the last thing he’d seen - the thing that stuck in his memory strongest of all - was the smile on Sinclair’s face through the window of the engineer’s compartment. It had been practically beatific. Utterly devoid of malice or regret. When he closed his eyes, he saw it still. _There_ was a cryptic bastard if ever he’d seen one.

He wished Harold could’ve been there to see it. But he’d long ago made it a point to not dwell on impossible wishes.

Carefully, he slid his hand into his pocket and touched the Electro Bolt hypo. He did a quick once-over of the occupants of the car.

There was no one in here but the ones he’d come with. Louie appeared to be napping. At least - he was stretched out on a bench, his legs splayed in the aisle and his chest rising and falling with the gentle rhythm characteristic of sleep. It was difficult to tell whether his eyes were actually closed behind his mask without going over there and looking down his eyehole, but it was a safe enough bet to say they were. 

Naledi and Jesenski were deep in conversation. Jesenski was doing most of the talking. Every so often bits of what he was saying reached Delgado’s ears over the sound of the wheels on the track. He was repeating the word “equity” quite a bit. Naledi was nodding incessantly at him, a big smile on her face. A surge of jealousy rose in Delgado at this, but he tamped it down as fast as it had come. Louie notwithstanding, it wasn’t the time for ridiculous divisions to spring up between them. Besides, she could talk to whoever she damn well pleased. If they were ever to build a more just society, he had to move past such notions of ownership.

Lamb’s back was to him. She clung to a pole and stood there stiffly, staring through the window to the car in front of them in silence, her other hand tight on the strap of her bag. He tried to think of something he could possibly say to her to help. If there was anything that _could_ be said. All his mind dredged up was static. He supposed there wasn’t much more he could do to put her at ease short of placing her daughter in her arms himself. 

Relatively certain that no one was watching him, he pulled the hypo from his pocket, hooked his elbow around his own pole and jabbed the needle into the most conveniently placed existent needle-mark on his wrist. He suppressed the sound in his throat when a surge of electricity tingled from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. When the feeling had subsided, he examined the play of energy beneath his skin, thinking it strangely beautiful. Then, with a thought, he made it go away. 

He felt somewhat better now. That shitty little headache that’d been behind his eyes for days was gone and he wasn’t quite so upset at Naledi paying attention to someone other than him.

A drunk couple and a family of three climbed on at the next stop. The couple giggled on each other’s shoulders, paying little attention to anyone outside their comfortable bubble. But the family eyed him like a rabid dog that was liable to pounce on their child at any second. When he looked back, he saw that Jesenski had pulled his mask over his face and that him and Naledi had fallen silent. 

For the first time since he’d entered the Penthouse, he wished he’d grabbed something to cover his face with too. It wouldn’t help, of course. He would still be what he was beneath it. Odds were he’d get even more stares strolling through Fort Frolic with a hockey mask like Jesenski’s. But...if they didn’t see what was beneath it, if they didn’t _know_...it felt better, somehow. 

He rested his eyes as the train chugged along so he wouldn’t see them staring at him.

-

The bathysphere ride was a bit easier than the train had been. It was cramped with all five of them crammed inside and Louie’s pipe had nowhere to go except Delgado’s ribcage, but within its confines, they could talk freely. They could exist apart from the prying eyes that accused them with every glance. For a few minutes at least, the atmosphere was easy. Celebratory, even. There was talk of raiding a liquor shop on the way back, once they were done and both Lambs were safely on their way.

The one thing the bathysphere was indeed too small for was spreading out the map and making a definite plan. A few elegantly dressed bypassers at the bathysphere depot gave them the side eye when they got out, but Delgado resolutely ignored them and kept on heading towards a quieter spot than the one they were in.

As the one in the lead, he was the first to sight the body. He stopped in his tracks, words failing him. Naledi was halfway through chiding him for having stopped when she fell silent too.

She’d been a woman in an evening gown of pale gold fabric and satin opera gloves. Her skirt was splayed like the plumage of a downed bird. Her arms were akimbo, as though she hadn’t even tried to catch herself as she fell. Whatever had happened, it must have been fast. The still-wet pool of blood around her head that seemed so much bigger than what should have fit in her small body certainly seemed to say so.

“Ah...Louie.” Jesenski said, his tone conversational, his every word carefully chosen. “When you went off to the little boys’ room back there, you didn’t… _possibly_...happen to”-

“Do I look like I got a firearm, smartass?” Louie hissed, nudging the woman’s head with his pipe to reveal the bullet hole in her brow and then roughly letting it fall back down. “The hell do you take me for? The fuck is _wrong_ with you?”

He grabbed Jesenski by the front of his shirt. 

“Hey, look”, Jesenski said, a tremor creeping into his voice. “I didn’t mean”-

“You find yourself a stiff and the first thing that pops into that dumbass _dome_ of yours”-

Naledi looked at Delgado, her expression tight and made a motion with her head towards the two of them. Delgado made a pained face in return and lifted up the ball that had already formed in his hand. 

“Calm yourselves.” Lamb said, stepping between them and gently prying them apart, her eyes hidden behind the glint of light on her glasses. “Nobody is at fault. Nobody needs come to harm over this. This…”

She gestured to the corpse.

“Is the fruit of a flawed experiment ruined by its own hand. Do not allow yourselves to be dragged down alongside it. We are better than that. We _must_ be better than that. Now, may we continue on our way before the ruling class _does_ assign us guilt?”

Louie hung his head. Jesenski nodded sheepishly. Naledi and Delgado let out a collective sigh of relief. Delgado had already sucked the ball back into his hand before Lamb even turned around.

In the next hall over, there was no one, living or dead. It was silent but for the drip of water in the distance and the faint notes of music spilling out from the party down the hall. 

Lamb knelt on the cold marble floor and smoothed the wrinkles out of her precious map. The four of them leaned in close as they studied it.

Delgado frowned, a sinking feeling in his stomach as he considered the sheer complexity that lay behind Rapture’s walls. A wall was a wall, or so he’d gone on believing for most of his life. But that never had been true, had it? The map was a maze of air vents, trash chutes and maintenance tunnels. There was an even more mind boggling tangle of passages labeled “Gatherer’s Vents.” Every single system overlapped with one another in some way. Where one ended, another was already halfway through. He imagined his curious boys clambering through such a maze at that age and cringed. 

One part of the building had been circled in red grease pencil where, presumably, Lamb’s inside man had told her to search. It narrowed things down but gave him little comfort. There were still so many uncomfortably tiny holes for a child to hide in.

“So…” Jesenski said, sitting up straighter, his face stern. “I’m thinkin’...we stick together. I’m not digging the idea of covering that much less ground. But...”

Louie grunted his displeasure.

“But if there’s a Protector, it’s gonna take all of us and I ain’t up to risking it.”

“Right.” Delgado agreed, nodding his head wearily.

“Agreed.” Naledi added.

“And...Doc,” Jesenski went on, turning to her. “You good with hanging back a-ways? Staying in earshot, I mean, but not gettin’ so close you risk the thing takin’ a shine to you. You’re probably aching to get a glimpse of your little girl, but…”

Lamb put her hand on top of his and gave him that faint, beneficent smile of hers.

“I have faith in you.”

She turned to the rest of the group.

“All of you. I trust that you will care for my child as I would, in my absence. And I thank you again for your...sacrifice. For your generosity. It…”

Something changed in her eyes, though the expression on her face remained serene.

“It is a quality I had begun to fear extinct from the human species. That ones such as you still exist...it means more to me than I am able to express. Thank you, all of you.”

Jesenski cleared his throat. Louie grunted pleasantly. Naledi wiped away a tear. All Delgado could do was smile back at Lamb.

“Well…” he said, standing up and stretching his back. “We ain’t getting any younger, are we?”

-

She ran right into their arms. It was like a miracle.

For a moment that felt like it lasted far longer than that, the four of them stood there, open-mouthed in a loose circle around her in the emptiness of the hallway, some singer’s crooning from the soiree above providing a soundtrack that no one had asked for. It was like looking at the picture in Lamb’s locket through a warped lens. The colors were off, there was a wrongness about the way the light hit her eyes, but even so, it was her. It was undoubtedly _her_. She stared back at them, her forehead wrinkling with confusion, her placid expression on the verge of turning into one of disappointment.

Delgado took a step forward, hardly daring to breathe. His first impulse was to take it slow, to refrain from startling her, to sweet-talk his way into her confidence, if possible. No need to resort to violence right off the bat. 

Then his eyes darted to the oversized syringe in her hand and his stomach clenched with a hunger deeper than that for food. 

_After_ , he told himself firmly. _After we’re away and the threat’s long gone. Just a little longer until-_

Louie lunged.

The girl let loose an ear-splitting scream.

“Get the ADAM!” Louie bellowed, making a clumsy swipe for the syringe.

It all crumbled to dust in an instant - the hope that they could make something _better_ , that there could ever _be_ a society not ruled by the strongest fist or the greediest hand, that they would ever be _free_ of the need to use violence.

He heard Naledi coo “Come with us, little girl!” and his memory went blank. 

When he came to, the syringe was in his hand and the girl was on the ground, looking up at him with watery eyes.

“I’m…” he said softly, looking at the syringe and then back at her, “Sor”-

A _CRASH_ rocked the ground beneath his feet, coupled with a crunchy _squelch_ that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He tore his eyes away from the girl to see-

That Jesenski was gone as though he had never been there, crushed to pulp beneath the foot of the creature that had leaped from the staircase above, his unfired gun still clenched in his motionless hand. 

The Protector stood atop his body, its visor glowing with a pale red light.

He hated Louie. He hated himself. He hated how this place constantly put him and all the people he cared about in situations that no one should have to endure. 

But the most visceral, immediate, symbol-of-everything-that-is-wrong-with-this-city target of his hate was _that thing_. That, he could do something about. That, he could teach the meaning of pain.

“You want some, big guy?” he taunted, as he jabbed his arm with the syringe and pushed the plunger, “You wanna dance, buddy?”

It spun its drill like it wanted to go and lurched forward.

The syringe fell from Delgado’s hand. An unnatural calm overtook him as the ADAM circulated through his blood. He stood his ground, Louie and Naledi standing firm behind him.

 _For Jesenski_ , he thought. _For Lamb. For Harold. For every single thing this goddamn place takes._

“Then fucking _DANCE_ _NOW_ , his brain screamed to his frozen body, _NOW, BEFORE-_

Naledi dashed in front of him, pipe in hand, her teeth bared. 

It bashed her away as though she were nothing. Her scream was cut off abruptly as she hit the floor.

For a moment, Delgado was hiding behind that barricade again, paralyzed with fear. Powerless to stop it from happening again. 

“Get out of here, freak!” he screamed, uselessly, as it crashed into him with the force of a rail car, knocking him to the ground.

It loomed over him like a mountain, nothing at all in the featureless face of its helmet. He heard the whirr of its drill and-

The impact of it shook the floor beneath him as he rolled, narrowly avoiding the same fate as Louie. He remembered that he wasn’t powerless. Not this time. 

The ball was in his hand faster than thought.

He looked the thing in its foggy visor and flung it with all his might.

-

The adrenaline was fading fast. Delgado’s body was somehow both unbearably heavy and light enough that the slightest gust of climate-controlled air from the nearest vent would blow him away like a dandelion puff. The creature loomed, motionless above him, its drill inches above his chest. Its visor glowed a cool, placid green.

“Move it.” he ordered the thing, waving his hand in a shooing motion. He grimaced when the movement sent a jolt of pain stabbing down his side. 

To his immense relief, it backed up a step and lowered its drill. Gritting his teeth as he fought through what was in all likelihood at least one broken rib, he hauled himself to his feet and staggered over to where Naledi had fallen.

“ _Nal_ ”- he cried out, before the other half of her name died in his throat.

Her eyes were as glassy as a porcelain doll’s. Her neck was bent in a direction that the necks of living people probably didn’t bend. No one would have needed a mirror to see that she wasn’t breathing. The spare med hypo, unused, poked out of her left breast pocket. 

The heaviness winning out after all, Delgado fell to his knees beside her, his bottom lip trembling. It felt like the whole world was rushing past at dizzying speed and here he was, a boulder on the streambed of time, unable to free himself from this single, endless moment.

The spell was broken when movement caught the corner of his eye. He sucked in his breath when he saw that Lamb’s girl hadn’t run for the hills after what he’d done to her. Her forehead creased with worry, she crept closer to her blood-soaked monster, reaching out to it with her tiny, off-color hand. She was making that face he’d seen lost children make in a grocery store when they were on the verge of figuring out that the strange woman they’d followed wasn’t their mother after all. 

Lamb peeked out of her hiding place. Delgado almost cried at seeing _somebody_ still standing, at the realization that all of it hadn’t been for nothing. Her eyes darted to her daughter, then to the creature standing over her.

“It’s...alright.” Delgado called out, in a tone devoid of conviction, the words on his tongue as heavy as the flesh on his bones. He closed his eyes and silently beamed another command into whatever passed for that thing’s skull. “Do whatever the hell you wanna do to it. It’ll listen to you. I don’t...”

He glanced down at Naledi’s empty eyes once more.

“...give a fuck.” he finished softly.

Lamb stepped into the light. For a moment, she stood at the top of the stairs, regarding the creature with that distant look of pity she reserved for the inmates who were too far gone to help. Then her expression went cold, her back stiffened and she marched down the stairs with an imperiousness befitting a queen. 

“There we are.” she said crisply, reaching out for her daughter, “He’s perfectly safe now.”

The girl made a move to get away from her. With more roughness than was perhaps necessary, she snatched her by the back of her dress and dragged her behind her. The girl looked at her with real fright, her eyes darting frantically between mother and protector, whatever precarious balance of impulses that were knocking around in her brain now thoroughly confused. 

_As though I’m one to talk about roughness_ , Delgado thought glumly. 

Lamb gave the creature a hard look.

“This is _not_ your daughter.” she intoned, her voice like the edge of a knife. “Do you understand?”

He had to admit, when he’d told her to “do whatever the hell you want to do with it”, “have a conversation” had not been among the options he thought that entailed. 

Whispering an apology to Naledi, he pulled the hypo out of her pocket and jabbed it into his own leg. The relief was immediate. He closed his eyes and took a breath that didn’t hurt quite as much as the last.

“ _Her name_ ” Lamb went on faintly, from the edge of his perception, “ _is Eleanor and she…_ ” 

He opened his eyes and closed Naledi’s by way of thanks. It was the only thing he could do. They’d have to leave her and the others behind if they were going to make it out of here before security rolled in. He felt a twinge of guilt at the thought of three more abandoned bodies in the hall, left to be trod upon by the uncaring party guests after the clock struck midnight.

“Now, kneel, please.” Lamb said, her cool voice cutting into his thoughts.

Delgado perked up. The bizarre dressing-down appeared to be reaching an end. He mentally prepared himself to pack it up and get a move on. His mind flashed back to the route they’d taken to get here as he tried to chart out the safest way to the bathysphere depot. Perhaps it’d be better if they hiked to the next building over. Less chance of running into someone who’d seen them walking the halls earlier. Though all of it hinged on how much of a fuss the girl-

The floor shook beneath him and the thoughts were knocked from his head when the creature fell, as though its legs had been kicked from under it.

 _Jesus_ , Delgado thought.

The sound that Jesenski had made under its foot played through his head again and he immediately tried to purge it from memory.

“Remove your helmet.” Lamb ordered, her tone unchanging.

Delgado watched with rapt attention. He’d seen what a dead one looked like once Louie had his way with it, but a living one? It was bound to be fascinating. There weren’t a whole lot of folks around who could say they’d seen _that_. It was a cold consolation prize for everything else that’d gone wrong, but if anything at all could be scavenged from the wreck, he’d take it.

The creature undid the fastenings that held its canvas and metal facade together, its sausage-like fingers moving with a delicacy that they didn’t look capable of. Air hissed from within when it released and a cloud of mist rose from the neck of the suit. The helmet fell from its hands with a dull _thunk_. Delgado squinted, impatient to peer through the mist before it dissipated. 

When it did, he breathed in sharply. 

There was a rushing in his ears that blocked out all other sounds.

 _Now_ , he saw Lamb mouth, as she reached into her bag. _Take the pistol._

_No_ , he argued with himself. No, no, no, no, no.

 _Place it against your head,_ her lips said.

It wasn’t possible. There was nothing - _nothing_ human about that face except - 

The eyes.

He knew those eyes. He could not have forgotten them if he tried. And how he had _tried_. 

His grip on the creature’s mind was weakening. He could feel it fighting him, see its hand shaking as it strained against Lamb’s order. 

_What if…_ he thought idly. _What if I let it go?_

Would it shoot her? Would it shoot _him_? Oh, if anyone deserved to be shot it was definitely, _absolutely_ -

The sound of the shot echoed within the empty walls, mixing with the scream of a desperate child.

The creature slumped to the ground. The pressure in his mind dissipated like the mist that had spilled out of its helmet.

The girl screamed unabatedly, tears streaming down her face, her tiny fists beating at her mother as she tried to break free of her embrace. When she sank her teeth into Lamb’s arm, Lamb made no reaction but to hold her closer. Her face was stony, her expression, unreadable. 

The world was spinning and Delgado was falling endlessly down a hole that had no bottom. He struggled to his feet and staggered backwards, the only thought in his head that he could hold to _Run, run, run._

His back hit wall. The music played on, not so much as skipping a beat. Voices murmured curiously above him.

“...hell was that?” one of them asked.

“Goddamn splicers…”

“ _Francis_ get back here, it’s not - eugh!”

Delgado crashed into that one as he tore through the crowd at the top of the stairs. For a moment their eyes locked, the partygoer’s wide and frightened through the holes of her feathered mask. Then he was bolting across blood-colored carpet, sucking in greedy mouthfuls of hazy air, eliciting cries of annoyance and dismay as he barreled through the people unlucky enough to be standing in his way.

A man grunted when he knocked into his glass of champagne with his shoulder. The liquid splashed down his shirt and fizzed on his skin. The glass rolled under his foot and nearly sent him falling on his face.

He hardly took notice of any of it. 

When he found the door, he stumbled through it and didn’t look back.

**Rapture, 1968**

What had once been a man lay in an alley as nameless as him, his tongue too shriveled to cry out for water, his legs as useless as the busted bulb in the streetlight he’d been staring up at for days. Had it been days? _Had_ to have been. The artificial indoor twilight never changed, but surely he wouldn’t be dreaming of how good one rusty drop of condensation would taste if it fell between his lips, had he only been lying here for hours.

It had been a careless slip on his part. He remembered that much. An empty can had rolled beneath his foot and down he’d gone. Or…

No, the wood of that balcony had been rotten. He could see it crumbling under his feet in his mind’s eye as clear as day. An accident he’d been far too hungry to see coming.

But that didn’t feel quite right either. Was he...had he been _pushed_? It felt slightly better to think that he’d been done in by an actively malicious force rather than clumsiness and blind chance. As though he were more important, somehow. That goddamn houdini...it’d been _him_. Had to be. Always popping off where he shouldn’t be popping. He hoped he got a nice strain of salmonella from his bean stash.

It was all academic anyway. It didn’t matter why or how he’d ended up in the one goddamn bone dry alleyway in the city with a dearth of feeling in his legs and far too much of it in his head. There was no one to help. No one who _would_ help, even if they were within groaning distance. He was alone. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to _not_ be alone. Even when he was with people, he’d always been alone.

The only constant was thirst. _Water_ \- he could hear it flowing just outside his range of sight. When he turned his head, a puddle of it shimmered into existence just beyond his reach. He’d tried to scooch himself toward it at first, but whenever he gained an inch, it had backed up one inch further. Now, he was too tired to try. He suspected that had he the strength, it would still elude him. 

And then there was the thirst that was deeper. _Madder_. The one that twisted his every thought, action and desire, whose want invaded his dreams every time he closed his eyes.

Even now, he thought bitterly, he’d have ADAM before water.

It hurt less to be asleep than it did to be awake.

He closed his eyes, pushed all other thoughts out of his mind and tried to remember what stars looked like.

-

It was the humming that woke him. Childish. Tuneless. Grating on nerves he didn’t realize could be grated upon.

A yellow-eyed girl with a distant smile on her lips was peering down at him when he opened his eyes. The monster in him lunged forward, grabbed her by the throat, expertly slit her belly open with his pocket knife, reached in and...

It wasn’t real. He blinked the last of the sleep out of his eyes and the realization that the body he was caged in was too weak to move settled into his bones like an old, familiar ache. He made do with laying there, silently fuming as she drew close enough to touch, but as far away as the moon as far as he was concerned in a practical sense.

He grimaced when she jabbed his belly with her syringe. It wasn’t as painful as it was profoundly uncomfortable. He kept his silence as she wiggled it around inside him, having trouble getting through the layer of tumor that wrapped around his midsection. There was a lot of it to go through, after all. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been without it. Or a year he’d spent not watching it grow.

She gave it up and pulled the needle free. He let out the breath he’d been holding. 

He wasn’t prepared when she abruptly stabbed it straight through a shallower spot of the tumor and deep into his abdomen.

He whined softly, the sound barely loud enough to make it out of his throat. The girl jerked backwards, an expression of absolute terror contorting her childish features into something terrible, if only for the briefest of moments. 

Then it shifted back to that vague, meaningless smile. She turned away as though nothing at all had happened and carried on, humming that infernal song at the exact point she’d left off.

The ground trembled beneath him as her protector followed close behind. He turned his head to catch a glimpse of its iron-shod feet passing by. 

Despite knowing damn well that the vast majority of them were sensible enough to leave you be if you hadn’t laid a hand on their girl, he felt a twinge of fear. All those times he’d tangled with the things, all the ones he’d had a hand in killing over the years - he hoped against hope that they didn’t _know_ , somehow. Did they feel such things as vengeance or kinship? He had no desire to find out.

His heart stopped when the creature did. The toes of its boots turned to face him. 

He closed his eyes and played dead. It didn’t require much acting. But still, it stayed rooted to its spot, the sound of its breathing raspy and inhuman. He could feel its gaze on him, lingering for what felt like hours.

What was it _doing_? Why couldn’t it just leave him alone? He’d only given the girl a little scare, the stupid thing. And that was more her fault than his.

The thought that it might be kinder to end it on the tip of the creature’s drill drifted, unbidden, through his mind. His imagination seized on the idea, conjuring gruesome images of every good-for-nothing he’d ever seen disemboweled for making the wrong move at the wrong time. If that was how it was going to be, _fine_. If the goddamn thing had it in its head to finish him off, he was _ready_ for it.

 _Do it, you fuck._ he thought, opening his eyes and twisting his chapped lips into a sneer. _Finish the food on your plate. Don’t you want to, tough guy? Or ain’t you got the…_

The toes of its boots turned away. 

“ _No…_ ” he croaked out, summoning all his strength to make a feeble grab at its retreating heels.

Its footsteps became a steady thump in the distance. He listened to it stomp through other alleyways, to the chatter of the girl guiding it along. When the noises faded away completely, he felt more alone than he’d thought it was possible to be.

He couldn’t breathe. His chest was wracked with dry, heaving sobs. He was trembling all over. There was pain in having been so close to death and having it slip through his fingers. What was worse was the relief that it _hadn’t_ happened.

 _Coward_ , he thought to himself. _Can’t even face your own death with dignity, can you?_

 _Stop it_ , a calmer voice argued back. _You know that isn’t true, dad._

_Dad?_ he echoed, grasping at the edge of a memory that was almost clear.

 _What did you teach me to do when I’m afraid?_ it asked, from inside his head.

 _To…_ , he thought, digging through decades of fog. _To find the beauty in the situation._

_Right._

He felt a hand slip into his own.

 _It’s going to be alright, dad._

Slowly, he steadied his breathing and released the tension that was holding him rigid.

He looked at the streetlight and the blank darkness of the ceiling above it for one last time. 

When he closed his eyes, he saw stars stretching out in all directions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally started writing CBDR in the summer of 2017. At the time, I was incredibly burned out - not from writing, but from a number of other factors. It came out in my work, my relationships and quiet time. I found myself behaving in ways that I did not recognize and could not control. This story is very much based on that period of my life and was written as a sort of dissection of why and how things were allowed to get that bad. It was difficult at times to go back to the mindset I was in when I first plotted it out, but I’m glad that I’ve finally put it to rest. 
> 
> And I still think it’s hilarious that my idea for the short story conclusion amounted to “Y’know what? We’re going to therapy.” Keep an eye out for ‘Making Up Leeway’, an upcoming short story set after ‘Delta’s Heart’, if you haven’t read that yet!
> 
> Trivia:
> 
> \- Delgado’s theme song is Mumford and Son’s ‘Ditmas.’ Devon’s is Alan Walker’s ‘Faded.’ I listened to them a lot while I was first writing the final chapters.
> 
> \- In 1939, the height requirement for joining the U.S. Navy was five feet, though it was taken off the books once the war was underway. The average height for an American male born in 1920-ish was 5’6”. Devon’s 5’1” (like me! =D). Ken is closer to six feet. Yes, they do look adorable standing next to each other.
> 
> \- Ken’s last name comes from the Polish word for fox. Tryggvi means ‘trustworthy’. Einar Herjólfsson is partially named after Bjarni Herjólfsson, who is believed to be the first European who sighted North America, but never got to set foot in it. Delgado’s first name means 'reborn' and his last name is ‘the thin man.’ Devon’s name begins with De, has five letters and a nebulous meaning of 'protector' which I was unable to verify outside of baby naming sites, but oh well, that’s what it is now. 
> 
> \- The number of the hotel room Devon stays in is the publication date of the first game. His prisoner identification number is the publication date of the second game. Delgado’s identification number is the date of New Year’s Eve, 1958. 
> 
> \- Part of Delgado’s crew in the epilogue are Bioshock 2 multiplayer characters. I kind of wanted to add Louie’s obsession with Knuckles into the story, but I just couldn’t find a good spot to add it in that wouldn’t disrupt the flow of the end.
> 
> \- There’s a strong case for Devon being autistic and for a time, I considered making it canon (focusing so hard on a pet project that he doesn’t really notice or care that there’s people outside his door who can fling lightning around and missing the cues that would have warned him that Navarro was up to no good?? _dude_ ). But between growing up with a parental figure who didn’t take much notice of him and it being just as possible to read him differently, I decided against it. Read him however feels right to you!
> 
> \- A while back, I got a comment on Delta’s Heart in which the commenter referred to Devon as Devon rather than Delta. Now, because I’d plotted out CBDR before writing Delta’s Heart, but finished Delta’s Heart first, I wrote it to be a standalone story meant to be understandable without knowing what led up to it. So, I kept Devon’s character purposefully vague and fully expected that readers would project their own Deltas onto him. I used his actual name once in the entire story. When this comment unexpectedly validated his existence as a human being with an identity outside that of the one that had been thrust on him, I was shocked by how happy that made me. So I turned around and put that energy back into CBDR, in the scenes in which Devon feels happiness at being referred to by his right name. Thanks, commenter! And thanks, everyone, for reading!


End file.
